Friday, June 20, 2008 [ philstar.com ]
A group of farmers in Batangas is seeking an end to the prevailing impasse on a land row between another group of farmers and a company planning to put up a cement factory, manufacturing plants, and a hotel in a 507-hectare property in the province.
Around 100 farmers from Barangays Baha and Talibayog in Calatagan trooped to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources main office in Quezon City Monday afternoon and sought the help of Secretary Lito Atienza to resolve the problem involving the utilization of the land to be developed by Asturias Chemical Industries.
Accompanied by Calatagan Mayor Sophia Palacio and other local officials, the farmers, who are said to be “bona fide residents” of the area registered their support to the development of the 507-hectare property, believing that only development would bail them out of poverty. The group said that they compose the “big majority” or 90 percent of residents in the area.
Previously, farmers belonging to the Task Force Baha-Talibayog camped near the DENR office in Quezon City to press their opposition to the project of ACI in the property, insisting on their claims to the land. The Task Force Baha-Talibayog has been urging the DENR to cancel the minerals production sharing agreement it issued to ACI, and to issue a “clarification” that the contested land is “not a mineral land.”
“We want development to benefit the people. We want people to have equal access to our resources because this is the only way by which we could give equal opportunity to the people to enjoy the benefits of our resources,” Atienza said.
“Unfortunately, there are issues that need to be resolved first so that the government, both the national and the local government, could come up with a decision based on truth (and) justice, and would benefit majority of the people,” he also said.
The conflict in Barangays Baha and Talibayog was an offshoot of a Supreme Court decision that upheld the validity of the sale of the 507-hectare property by heirs of Ceferino Ascue to ACI, which affected a number of farmers in the two communities.
According to the DENR, farmers opposed to the SC decision asserted that in 1989-1990, or prior to the sale of the land to ACI, the government issued emancipation patents covering the disputed property to 323 agrarian reform beneficiaries under the Operation Land Transfer (OLT) program. However, the Department of Agrarian Reform later invalidated the coverage of the property under OLT on the ground that the “landholding is not primarily devoted to rice/corn production,” the DENR noted. Further, the DENR said, the DAR said that “the existence of tenancy relations” in the property “has not been clearly established” and that the property “had long ceased to be agricultural; it has become mineral land.”
In 1997, the DENR issued an MPSA to ACI, covering a total area of 2, 336.8 hectares, traversing four barangays in Calatagan town, which include Barangays Baha and Talibayog. In 1998, the DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau granted an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) to ACI for the establishment of a cement plant in the property.
Atienza has earlier admitted that he could not reverse the decision of the SC, as well as the decision made by the DENR decades ago. Nevertheless, he ordered the temporary suspension of ACI’s MPSA a month ago. “I already heard the side of the other group. Now I have to listen to (the) side (of this group). We are doing this to get to the truth of the matter so that we could come up with a just solution, one that would benefit the majority,” Atienza said.
___________________________________________________________________________
