SC ruling on Hacienda Luisita doesn't favor single group

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Agrarian Reform on Wednesday clarified that the Supreme Court (SC) decision on the distribution of the Hacienda Luisita estate does not favor any single group.

The DAR issued the statement as it belied claims by the Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura that the High Court's decision was in favor solely of Ambala, another farmer's group.

DAR Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Anthony Parungao said that the SC decision was clear in ordering the distribution of the land to farmer-beneficiaries that meet the requirements or criteria it had set.

He added that High Tribunal had ordered the DAR to distribute land to farmworkers of the hacienda in 1989, which the department painstakingly followed.

"That was what the Supreme Court asked us to do. There was never any reference in the SC decision to favor any particular farmers' group. It would be grossly unfair to the other groups and farmers which advocated for its distribution, or to the vast majority of unaffiliated beneficiaries, for any one group to claim the land," he said.

He also said that the DAR has posted in several public locations the names of persons it had deemed as qualified beneficiaries.

The department has even given the different farmworker groups the list. No one, however, formally filed any petition or action for the removal of any beneficiary.

Parungao said that the DAR has been engaged in sustained operations to speed up the monumenting of farm lots after the department allocated farmlots to the qualified beneficiaries and subsequently distributed certified true copies of the titles to the land to the identified farmer-beneficiaries in the last quarter of 2013.

To date, 87.5 percent of the monumenting work has been completed, he said.

Around 6,024 farm lots have been monumented and about 4,716 farmworker-beneficiaries have been installed in more or less 5,500 lots, or almost 76 percent of those in the masterlist, despite reported instances of harassment of survey teams and actual destruction of "mohons" by those opposed to the DAR effort.

The DAR is confident that the remaining 860 lots will be monumented shortly, and that the remaining farmer-beneficiaries will be installed by next month, barring any further acts of harassment or obstruction, he said.

Parungao also said that the DAR is assisting farmer-beneficiaries in the 10 barangays of the Hacienda Luisita estate in voluntarily organizing themselves to enable them to better access support services and credit so that they can immediately work on their land.

Some 1,187 beneficiaries have already participated in preliminary organizing activities and are now members of these newly-formed farmers organizations, he said.

"Upon the registration of their CLOAs (certificate land ownership awards), the farmworker-beneficiaries became the actual owners of their individual parcel of lands.  As owners, these beneficiaries are free to determine what they want to do with the same, subject only to the limitations provided by the law,"Parungao said.