DAR, DENR ordered to fast-track land distribution

MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos has ordered concerned government agencies to fast-track land distribution, noting the government aims to distribute one million hectares of land before his administration ends in 2028.

Marcos issued the order to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Land Registration Authority (LRA).

Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III said that bottlenecks in the processing of land titles have delayed the distribution of lands to farmer-beneficiaries.

Estrella said that officials of the previous administration were slow in distributing land to farmer-beneficiaries due to lack of teamwork.

“No one tasked the DENR, LRA and DAR then. It is for this reason that the President instructed these three agencies. The President knew what he was doing when he told them to ‘get your acts together,’ ” Estrella said.

He said he talked to LRA administrator Gerardo Sirios to determine the cause of the delay in the distribution.

“We conducted comprehensive research and discovered that the Registry of Deeds has been burdened with pending land titles of housing projects as well as in conducting daily transactions at the DENR and DAR,” Estrella said.

He said the agencies have determined and fixed the bottlenecks, and were able to streamline the process.

From one million hectares, the pending lands for distribution are now down to more than 800,000 hectares.