QUEZON CITY, July 5 -- The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has intensified the validation of land titles it has distributed, with its recent visit to Nueva Vizcaya, in pursuit of its mandate to find out the real score about the country's Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

DAR Undersecretary for Special Concerns Office Carim Panumpang said that validating the land titles, specifically the Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs) and Emancipation Patents (EPs), is the only way to know the current status of the CARP.

"We need to know whether our beneficiaries are still in possession of the farmlots awarded to them, had transferred them to their heirs by way of succession, or sold them already to the third parties," Panumpang said during the "Orientation and Pulong-pulong" that was conducted in the municipalities of Bagabag and Villaverde, in the province of Nueva Vizcaya.

DAR-Nueva Vizcaya Provincial agrarian reform program officer Dindi Tan welcomes guests and participants to the "Orientation and Pulong-pulong" in preparation for the CLOA Validation activity.
 

Panumpang said the DAR needs concrete proof as to where the CARP stands now after more than 30 years of implementation.

The CARP was launched in 1988, 16 years after the implementation of the Presidential Decree No. 27, also known as the "Operation Land Transfer."

Panumpang said the DAR's CLOA validation team had gone to a number of localities in Batangas, Cavite, Cebu, Mindoro and Misamis Oriental and one of the puzzling issues that had been encountered is that 34 percent of the farmlots awarded to the beneficiaries are either sold due to poverty or abandoned as the farmlots are far from the beneficiaries' residences.

DAR Nueva Vizcaya provincial agrarian reform program officer Dindi Tan accepted the new challenge that goes with the CLOA validation even as she expresses her confidence over the ability of her staff to deliver the new task at hand.

Undersecretary Panumpang discusses the significance of CLOA validation in determining whether or not the CARP is a success.
 

"This activity is in consonance with the marching orders of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and DAR Secretary John Castriciones to assess the realities on the ground vis-à-vis the distributed CLOAs," Tan said.

Panumpang said the DAR may consider conducting inclusion and exclusion proceedings to recall the farmlots from undeserving beneficiaries and "reallocate the farmlots to the deserving ones."

The CLOA validation in Nueva Vizcaya will start on July 12, 2021. (DAR)

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