TACLOBAN CITY – More than three thousand agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) from different towns of Leyte, Southern Leyte and Biliran rejoiced after they were relieved from paying their unpaid land amortizations amounting to P136,764,576, which included interests.
On Wednesday, December 18 this year, Ubaldo Sadiarin Jr., Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Assistant Secretary for Support Services, represented Secretary Conrado Estrella III in handing the 4,492 Certificates of Condonation with Release of Mortgage (COCROMs) at the Tacloban City Convention Center freeing 3,142 ARBs from financial burden. Sadiarin was assisted by DAR Eastern Visayas Regional Director Robert Anthony Yu.
Both officials repeatedly reminded the ARBs not to sell their awarded lands so their children and grandchildren could inherit them.
Seventy years old Alberto Carel from Naval, Biliran, who was among those who received COCROMs during the said occasion, expressed his gratitude to President Ferdinan Marcos Jr. for relieving him from paying his P147,596.51 land amortization at the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP), one of the highest unpaid amortizations.
According to Carel, he was not able to start paying his amortization because he always run short of his income until he learned that the President ordered the condonation of the ARBs’ debts.
The President signed the New Agrarian Emancipation Act (Republic Act No. 11953) on July 7 last year, which condoned P57.557-billion of ARBs’ debts.
Aside from the COCROMs, 669 individual electronically generated Certificates of Land ownership Award (e-CLOAs) issued under the Worl Bank-funded Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) project were distributed to 502 agrarian reform beneficiaries. The land titles covered an aggregate area of 758 hectares situated in the above-mentioned provinces.
Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez, who at the same time is the chairman of the Regional Peace and Order Council, graced the said occasion and disclosed that the President instructed him to make sure that landless farmers receive their CLOA and are properly installed.
Land distribution is DAR’s contribution to End local Communist Armed Conflict (ELCAC), a whole-of-nation approach in addressing insurgency problems in the country, Yu explained.
Meanwhile, as assistance to ARBs in making their awarded land productive, nearly P2-million worth of farm machineries and equipment were turned over on the same occasion to the Barangay Anahawan Farmers Agriculture Cooperative from Bato, Leyte.
(JOSE ALSMITH L. SORIA)
