MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Audit (COA) has flagged the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) over poor accomplishments under its Land Acquisition and Distribution (LAD) program despite a high fund utilization rate.
“The major programmed activities of the agency’s Land Acquisition and Distribution were short of its targets. Physical accomplishments were registered at 32.94 to 94.66 percent, despite the reported high fund utilization of 97.94 percent of its programmed budget of P2.613 billion,” the COA said in its 2022 annual audit report on DAR.
For one, the COA noted, of the target of 42,743.0041 hectares of land that should be covered by registered Emancipation Patents/Certificates of Landownership Awards (EPs/CLOAs), only 32.94 percent or 14,081.5895 hectares were actually covered.
Of the target of 43,852.1853 hectares of land that should have complete documentation or claimfolder (CF), only 81.43 percent or 35,709.2268 hectares were processed.
Meanwhile, of the 41,807.9647 hectares of land previously covered by EPs/CLOAs and thus were already up for distribution, only 94.66 percent or 39,574.1615 hectares were actually distributed.
“The reported financial accomplishment under LAD of P2,559,130,532.50 or 97.94 percent is not commensurate with the physical accomplishment, considering the deviations from the set target during the year,” the COA said.
The COA said failure to meet the annual targets “causes challenges in the remaining years of the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), leading to low accomplishment for the EP/CLOA registration.”
The LAD is a sub-program under the DAR’s Land Tenure Security Program. It encompasses the identification, screening and selection of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs), conduct of land survey and field investigation, land valuation, landowner compensation, generation, registration and distribution of CLOAs and installation of ARBs on the awarded lands.
The COA recommended to DAR to direct the concerned regional offices and provincial offices (POs) to “conduct preliminary survey on the landholdings prior to inclusion in the targets and determine the availability of documents needed to support the land acquisition.”
The COA said that DAR municipal offices must also ensure completeness of CF documentation before transmittal to PO to “avoid any delays and to facilitate or expedite review.”
In a reply, the DAR said its Field Operations offices are already conducting national data cleansing “to ensure the workability” of 410,897.82 hectares of lands under CARP.
The DAR said there is also an ongoing review and validation of the CFs “to ascertain the status of landholdings and to identify the issues and concerns that can be resolved and need management intervention.”
Meanwhile, in the same audit report, the COA has recommended to DAR to consider imposing administrative sanctions against an erring official in connection with a Collective CLOA (CCLOA) dated Dec. 28, 1992 covering 64.2758 hectares of land located in Barangay Bataan in San Juan, Batangas, which have yet to be parcelized and awarded to 44 landless farmers even after 31 years and despite the farmers’ advanced age.
The COA said a review of the records revealed that the subject CCLOA was submitted to the Registry of Deeds in 2013, but it was returned by the latter to the DAR PO of Batangas sometime in 2016 due to lack of original Deed of Partition, hence, was not processed.