B’laan natives hopeful they’ll get back South Cotabato ancestral land

GENERAL SANTOS CITY – A group of B’laan tribesmen that is claiming part of the Dole pineapple plantation in Polomolok, South Cotabato, is hopeful it will get back some 2,700 hectares of the land.

This, after Agrarian Reform Secretary Hernani Braganza created the Task Force B’laan jointly with the National Cultural and Indigenous People (NCIP), to retrieve part of the ancestral land being claimed by the B’laans in Polomolok town.

"We will finally get justice soon and regain the land of our forefathers which was taken away from them in 1989, through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law," said Pastor Poony Dawang, spokesman of 21 B’laan clans composed of some 3,000 natives.

The government-controlled National Development Corp. (NDC) leased the tract of land to Dole Phils., a local subsidiary of the giant American Dole Food Co. Inc., in 1963.

As recommended by the task force, Braganza ordered the conduct of a relocation survey on the 2,700-hectare property at the boundary of Barangays Polo, Kinilis and Maligo in Polomolok town and Barangays Kablon, Acmonan and Cebuano in Tupi town.

Using Swede equipment, the survey will be able to find out with certainty whether portions of the area are within the B’laan reservation as defined under Presidential Proclamation 762 which the late President Carlos P. Garcia issued in 1961.

Last Sept. 16, representatives of the local governments of Tupi and Polomolok, the DAR, the NCIP and the 21 B’laan clans agreed that the survey will be conducted not later than on Oct. 15.

Leaders of the 21 B’laan clans said their ancestors had sold their rights to the land to the NDC which, in turn, later leased it to Dole Phils.

In December 1988, however, Dawang alleged that the NDC turned over the land consisting of more than 8,900 hectares, or precisely 8,963.78 hectares – 6,165.13 hectares titled and 2,798.4621 hectares untitled – to the DAR.

Signed into law on July 5, 1961, Presidential Proclamation 762 established the so-called 2,507-hectare B’laan civil reservation site.

In 1989, when the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was implemented in accordance with Republic Act 6657, the DAR distributed the entire area to some 8,000 members of the Dolefil Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Cooperative Inc. (DARBCI), most of them Dole workers.

But the subsequent distribution of the certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs), with no less than then President Corazon Aquino herself officiating at the ceremonies, would soon be clothed with doubts because the recipients were not allegedly bona fide farm workers of Dole Phils., except for Nonie Tiala, then DARBCI president and a former Dole employee.

Also on hand at the distribution rites was then Agriculture Secretary Senen Bacani who, until the previous year, was Dole vice president and general manager.

Tiala has come forward and executed an affidavit stating that "except for two members, all incorporators of the DARBCI are Dolefil employees who did not perform and render agricultural services."

DARBCI, now a P200-million agricultural cooperative, has been raking in millions of pesos from land rentals they collect from Dole – P8,000 to P10,000 per hectare per year.

Dole is now using the area for its pineapple, asparagus and tropical fruit plantations.

Meanwhile, engineer Carlos Baldostamon of the Dolefil Human Resource Development said the company has decided to keep out of the controversy because it had nothing to do at all with any of the transactions.

"DARBCI people should be the one to make an official statement since they were the recipients of CARP," Baldostamon told The STAR.