Updated July 30, 2009 12:00 AM [ philstar.com ]
MANILA, Philippines - The House of Representatives approved last night the bicameral conference committee report extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program by five more years.
Speaker Prospero Nograles said the report’s approval “reflects the government’s resolve to heighten rural productivity to spur a balanced national economic development.”
“Rural productivity is a vital cog to ensure food security and sustained national economic development. This is a commitment to our farmers,” he said.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, one of the authors of the CARP extension bill, said the salient features of the measure include compulsory land acquisition and distribution retroactive to July 1 this year up to June 30, 2014.
He said the bill allocates P150 billion for the program, 40 percent of which would be earmarked for support services.
It would prohibit the conversion to other uses of irrigated and irrigable lands “to ensure food supply and security,” he said.
“The mode of voluntary land transfer, which has been documented to have been used for simulated and flawed coverage, is abandoned after June 30, 2009,” he added.
Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, another author, said more than one million hectares of agricultural land still have to be distributed to tenant-tillers.
These include three large sugar plantations owned by the family of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo in Negros Occidental, he said.
The Arroyo lands have not been distributed despite President Arroyo’s promise in 2001 that these would be given to their tillers, she said. – Jesus Diaz
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