TABUK CITY, Kalinga – More than 40,000 Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) will be distributed by the agrarian reform department to farmers from the different parts of the country on July 7, 2023 to help in speeding up the distribution of free lands to the identified beneficiaries.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III said that the distribution of the CLOAs will be simultaneously done with the signing into law by President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. of the New Agrarian Reform Emancipation Act which mandates the distribution of the lands subject to agrarian reform to the identified recipients.
He claimed that by 2028, the government shall have distributed the more than 500,000 lands subject to agrarian reform, those lands covered by collective CLOAs and those lands covered by the provisions of Executive Order No. 75, series of 2019 or those government-owned lands that could be given out to the farmers.
“We will remain aggressive in the distribution of lands to our farmers for them to own the lands that they currently till for free,” Secretary Estrella stressed.
The DAR official explained that the government stands to lose around P50 billion in the process of giving out the lands to the farmers but the same is manageable because it will be on a multi-year obligation that is why it will be spread over a period of time and not on a one time spending.
According to him, the distribution of the 40,000 CLOAs will just be the start of the government’s efforts to give out the available lands to the farmers to help them establish their ownership over the lands that they currently till aside from ensuring better productivity to contribute in stabilizing the country’s food security.
Secretary Estrella admitted that the problem in the distribution of CLOAs in the past was the issuance of the so-called ‘collective CLOAs; that caused confusion and conflict among the recipients in the said documents because of the absence of the parcelization of the lands covered under the same.
He stated that the agency will aggressively work on the parcelization of the issued ‘collective CLOAs’ and employ strategies for the resolution of existing conflicts so that each of the beneficiaries will be getting their respective CLOAs on the lands that they currently till for them to become more productive and will be encourage to help in stabilizing the country’s food security.
Secretary Estrella disclosed that the agency will be closely working with the agriculture department, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the land Bank of the Philippines to be able to provide more support services to the farmers such as assistance, scholarship grants for the children of farmers, skills trainings and soft loans that will contribute in providing them with opportunities to be more productive members of the agriculture sector.
Estrella was in the city recently to distribute some 682 CLOAs to around 772 farmers from the different parts of the province which will help in improving the government’s efforts to distribute free lands to the identified beneficiaries.
