Luisita beneficiaries sell farm lots – Peping

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – Agrarian reform beneficiaries of Hacienda Luisita are selling their lands due to lack of government support to make the areas productive, former congressman Jose “Peping” Cojuangco said yesterday.

“What can you do with a 3,000-square-meter land?” Cojuangco, elder brother of President Aquino’s late mother former President Corazon Aquino said in a telephone interview.

Cojuangco said Luisita beneficiaries have devised ways to skirt the prohibition against the sale of government-distributed lands.

He lamented that the land reform program stops at land distribution, contrary to the intent of the law that he helped craft when he was a congressman.

The Supreme Court has ordered the distribution of the hacienda, which used to be owned by the Aquino and Cojuangco families, two years ago.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid ng Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) have accused the Cojuangco-controlled Tarlac Development Corp. of collusion with the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to manipulate land distribution in the hacienda.

“From an original land area of 6,453 hectares, the Cojuangcos only declared 4,915 hectares to be agricultural in 1989. Of these, 500 hectares were approved for conversion into non-agricultural use, making them exempt from agrarian reform. Another 80.5 hectares was subtracted to make way for the Subic Clark Tarlac Expressway,” Ambala said.

In a statement, the Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) also criticized the so-called “sugar block farming” being encouraged by DAR at Luisita.

UMA said the scheme allows a farm manager to control farm lots leased by an agrarian  reform beneficiary who has no capital to make it productive.

“Behind the much-hyped land distribution of the Luisita estate is a cunning and predatory scheme which perpetuates the control of the Cojuangco-Aquinos over thousands of agricultural lands,” UMA said.