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[av_heading heading=’Sugar group slams DAR’s leaseback campaign ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY RANIE AZUE
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BACOLOD City – The National Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFSW) slammed a leaseback campaign that Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) officer-in-charge Rosalina Bistoyong launched.
NFSW regional chairman Rolando Rillo said he received information that DAR will implement a new scheme reconsolidating lands awarded to agrarian reform beneficiaries.
Rillo said more than 50 agrarian reform beneficiaries in Negros Occidental are no longer tilling the land given to them and yet some who still do are mired in extreme poverty.
Rillo said DAR only turned over the certificates of land ownership to the farmers but it never provided support services and extra capital to make the lands productive.
He claimed this problem started when DAR and landowners manipulated the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in 1988.
The unproductive lands are leased back to the original landowner or leased to someone else, Rillo said.
NFSW believes that the only solution to the issue is the implementation of a “genuine agrarian reform program.”
Rillo also criticized the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte for allowing the removal of Rafael Mariano as the DAR secretary.
Rillo said Mariano was “hell bent” in implementing genuine land distribution to farmers./PN
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