|
BACOLOD City: The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)
said on Sunday that it is installing another 65 farmer-beneficiaries
to portions of the 114-hectare disputed land of Hacienda
Velez-Malaga in Barangay Robles, La Castellana, Negros Occidental.
Secretary Nasser Pangandaman
said the department had installed only 57 of 122
farmer-beneficiaries of Hacienda Velez-Malaga on Thursday.
Pangandaman said before he left
the hacienda late afternoon Thursday, he asked the police and
military contingents to remain in the area to ensure the safety of
the farmer-beneficiaries.
He said the security forces were
told not to leave until issues between the farmers identified with
the Task Force Mapalad and the hacienda’s management are resolved.
“There is a total of 122
farmer-beneficiaries, but there is a motion for reconsideration
questioning the qualification of the remaining farmers, who are
allegedly not actual farm workers of Hacienda Malaga,” he said.
He said the appeal was filed by
the hacienda’s owner. He added that the department would have to
wait for the resolution of the petition before installing the
remaining 65 farmers to their lands.
Besides the motion for
reconsideration, Pangandaman said the department would have to
resolve the hacienda’s management claim on the projected profit of
sugarcanes planted in the awarded lands. “There will be
negotiations and hopefully we can come up with a win-win solution on
this,” he said.
Meanwhile, Pangandaman said the
department is targeting to award 130,000 hectares of disputed lands
to farmer-beneficiaries nationwide this year.
He said in 2005 and 2006, the
department was able to install farmer-beneficiaries to 130,000
hectares of land.
“Definitely our program will
continue. We will continue awarding land to landless farmers,” he
said.
On Thursday, farmers workers
identified with the hacienda’s management tried to prevent the
installation of the 57 farmer-beneficiaries.
“There was a resistance from
farm workers identified with the management but, with the assistance
from the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Army, we were
able to install them peacefully,” Pangandaman said.
With the installation, the
beneficiaries who have been holding a hunger strike outside the DAR
office in Quezon City announced that they were ending their protest.
Nine of the hunger strikers were
rushed to hospital Tuesday night after they started vomiting and
complained of feeling dizzy. The beneficiaries went on a hunger
strike for almost a month to protest DAR’s failure to install
them.  --Panay
News
|
