(JOSE ALSMITH L. SORIA)
MOTIONG, Samar – About 100 farmers from nine Samar towns and two cities received last week their individual Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs) as the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) held a marathon distribution of land titles in the said province.
For three consecutive days, Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer II (PARPO II) Segundino Pagliawan went town-hopping to lead the distribution of 116 CLOAs, mostly electronically generated titles (e-titles) under the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project, covering an aggregate area of 172.9791 hectares.
According to Pagliawan, this is in response to the directive of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to expedite the distribution of CLOAs to the agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and finish it before his term expires in 2028.
Further, “Secretary Estrella ordered also the immediate distribution of CLOAs to the ARBs after these are released by the Registry of Deeds (ROD),” he added.
Pagliawan, accompanied by Atty. Ronaldo Escribano and Engr. Lucena Mancol, chiefs of the Legal and the Land Tenure Improvement Divisions, respectively, at the DAR Samar Provincial Office, came here and to the towns of Sta. Margarita, Gandara, Tarangnan, San Jorge, Daram, Jiabong, Paranas, San Sebastian including the cities of Calbayog and Catbalogan to hand the individual land titles to the ARBs.
These titles were released by the Registry of Deeds (ROD) from January to February 26 this year, disclosed Pagliawan.
He added that for this year, DAR Samar Provincial Office is tasked to distribute more than 5,000 e-titles.
Meanwhile, Dominga Rivera, 78, one of the recipients from Barangay Calapi, a remote farming village some 20 kilometers away from the center of this town, expressed her gratitude to the President and agrarian reform secretary, Conrado Estrella III, that she is now free from giving shares of her harvest to the former landowner.
(JOSE ALSMITH L. SORIA/PR)
