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By Jomar Canlas, Reporter
Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr.
assured on Thursday that the House of Representatives will approve a
bill extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) for
another five years before the chamber’s adjournment next week.
If Congress fails to pass the
bill extending CARP before the recess that starts on June 13, then
President Gloria Arroyo should call a special session, a church
official and a party-list lawmaker said also on Thursday.
Nograles posed no objection to a
special session, which he said will give the Senate more time to
pass its counterpart measure.
The Senate, however, has not
begun committee deliberations on its version of the bill.
“We are rushing the approval of
the proposal on the CARP extension, but we also don’t want to
compromise the quality of the measure that will emanate from the
House. We want to cure the defects of the previous CARP Law,”
Nograles said.
According to the House Speaker,
plugging loopholes in the original agrarian reform law will truly
benefit farmers especially and help the government’s programs to
achieve food sufficiency.
Nograles said it would be
disastrous if the CARP-extension bill is put to a vote without
assurance of majority support for it.
“There are more than 200
congressmen who may have different views. If we force a vote without
the necessary numbers, all the hard work exerted on this bill will
just go to waste. We will be back to zero,” he added.
Nograles appealed to the
Department of Agrarian Reform to impose a moratorium on the
conversion of all arable lands while the extension of CARP is being
worked out.
“We should also ensure that we
don’t just give out lands for the sake of compliance with the law
but we should also make sure that the intended beneficiaries are
given adequate support to boost food production,” he said.
Major recommendations
Nograles batted for recommended
amendments to the original CARP law of 1988: repeal of the stock
distribution option which favors big farm lands; making a priority
the granting of individual land titles to all beneficiaries;
acceleration of compulsory acquisition of land rather than voluntary
offer to sell or transfer; increase in budgetary allocation for
support services and development of human capital; revitalization of
the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council by appointing an
undersecretary for the council; streamlining of the Agrarian-Reform
department’s top-heavy bureaucracy; harmonization of strategies or
activities in agrarian-reform communities among the Department of
Agriculture, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, local
government units and the private sector; making credit available and
accessible to CARP beneficiaries; and exploration of other options
or programs for land reform in sugar and coconut lands as these
farms require different technologies and market inputs.
These changes were suggested by
the Congressional Oversight Committee on Agricultural and Fisheries
Modernization headed by Palawan Rep. Abraham Mitra and Aurora Rep.
Juan Edgardo Angara.
Bishop Broderick Pabillo and
Akbayan party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel noted that the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program will expire on June 10 but
Congress ends its session on June 12.
Pabillo, the head of the social
and justice arm of the influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
the Philippines, said President Arroyo calling a special session
will demonstrate her “seriousness” in extending the
agrarian-reform program.
Hontiveros, the deputy leader of
the House minority, claimed during a press conference that Mrs.
Arroyo’s partymates are “the ones delaying the [passage of the
CARP-extension] bill.”
The President this week certified
the bill as “urgent.”
--With Anthony Vargas
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