Farmers Turn to DOJ for Registration of Land Title
- Category LATEST POSTS, Press Releases
- Post tags agrarian reform, DOJ, hacienda bacan, mike arroyo, raul gonzales
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Refused by the Register of Deeds of Bacolod City and the Land Registration Authority of Quezon City, and ignored by President Arroyo, farmers from Negros Occidental seeking the distribution of Hacienda Bacan owned by First Gentleman Mike Arroyo have now turned to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for registration of their certificate of land ownership award (CLOA).
Task Force Mapalad president Jose Rodito Angeles said the farmers are hoping that the DOJ, as a government body having authority over the LRA, can correct the injustice currently being suffered by the 68 farmer-beneficiaries of the 157-hectare Hacienda Bacan, located in Barangay Guintubhan, Isabela, Negros Occidental.
We appeal to Secretary Raul Gonzales to help the farmer-beneficiaries of Hacienda Bacan. We urge him to compel the LRA to register their CLOA, so that the Department of Agrarian Reform can formally award them their land, said Angeles.
He said the CLOA was generated by DAR in July last year after the Land Bank of the Philippines had issued a memorandum of valuation of the property and a certificate of payment amounting to P42 million in the name of Rivulet Agro-Industrial Corporation, the declared corporate owner of the hacienda.
However, the Register of Deeds of Bacolod City refused to register the CLOA, saying that the payment should have been issued in the name of Mike Arroyo.
The farmers turned to LRA, but Administrator Benedicto Ulep refused to register the CLOA using the same argument.
The farmers last week held a march-rally in front of Arroyos office at LTA Building on Perea Street in Makati City to denounce him for holding on greedily to the land which was in the first place offered to CARP under the voluntary offer to sell (VOS) scheme.
The farmers, however, were confronted by Arroyos lawyer, Ruy Rondain, who said that Arroyo was not the owner of the property.
Angeles said the DOJ is the last hope of the farmers after their repeated plea for President Arroyo to order the registration of their CLOA had turned on deaf ears.
He said, however, that if the farmer-beneficiaries fail under this administration to get their land, they still hope that the next administration can give them justice.
If the farmers do not get their land under the Arroyo administration, we will work hard for a sympathetic leader to get elected in 2010, and then we will pursue the case for distribution of Hacienda Bacan. We wish to remind the Arroyos that they cannot escape the law once they are out of power, said Angeles.
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