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LEGAZPI CITY: The farmer beneficiaries of Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program (CARP) in Bicol said the Department of Agrarian
Reform in the region is the poorest performer in terms of its land
distribution program.
Joel Calla, board member of the Bicol Hegemony
for Empowerment and Rural Development (B-Heard), Inc., said
thousands of farmers in Albay and Camarines Sur provinces have
expressed disgust over the poor implementation of the CARP program
in Bicol, which is largely due to court initiated agrarian reform
reversal cases and reported occurrence of agrarian-reform violence.
“While we’re so much frustrated with the
CARP implementation, ending CARP now will only justify and
legitimize the old agrarian insurrection and unrest in the
countryside,” Calla said, adding that thousand of farmers in Albay
and Camarines Sur are united in calling all peasant sectors and the
Arroyo government to extend CARP with reforms.
Calla said that reforms should be made on three
major components such as land tenure improvement, agrarian justice
delivery and program beneficiaries’ development.
“We strongly invoke Article X111 of the
constitution that says: The Congress shall give the highest priority
to the enactment of measures that protect and enhance the right of
all people to human dignity, reduce social, economic and political
inequality, remove cultural inequalities, by equitably diffusing
wealth ad political power for the common good,” he said.
According to Calla, the current threat of food
shortage under the Arroyo regime calls for all Filipinos to
pro-actively engage the government to extend the CARP
implementation beyond 2008.
-- Rhaydz B. Barcia
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