Tuesday, September 15, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES [ BusinessWorld Online ]
THE AGRARIAN Reform department is waiting for the go-signal from the Cojuangco and Aquino families before releasing the clan’s Hacienda Luisita sugar estate in Central Luzon to farmers.
"The department is ready to distribute to qualified beneficiaries the said landholding anytime the Cojuangco family decides to abandon its stakes at the 5,000-hectare sugarcane plantation," Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser C. Pangandaman said yesterday in a press release.
Mr. Pangandaman added that the department had already identified farmer-beneficiaries and had generated certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) as early as 2006.
However, a temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court "at the last minute" kept them from distributing the CLOAs.
Mr. Pangandaman said he had advised the Cojuangcos to withdraw the petition for a preliminary writ of injunction at the Supreme Court, which led to the issuance of the restraining order.
Continuing labor disputes within the estate have led to huge debts, Senator Benigno C. Aquino III had said, adding that these troubles might continue if his family did not relinquish control of the sugar plantation.
The Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac became controversial when the administration of the late President Corazon C. Aquino exempted it from the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, and placed it under the stock distribution option (SDO) instead.
In 2006, however, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council revoked the sugar plantation’s SDO. The decision is on appeal at the Supreme Court.
In August, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed a law to extend the agrarian program, which expired in 2008, to June 13, 2014.
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