Farmers Sues Ex-Estancia Mayor, For Illegal Construction

A farmers’ group sues a former Estancia town mayor and an engineer for illegally putting up infrastructures in a vast tract of land placed under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in Estancia, Iloilo.

In their complaint, the Central Region Farmers Beneficiary Association Inc. (CRFBAI), represented by its president Roger Bellosillo, claimed that former Estancia municipal mayor Restituto Mosqueda illegally constructed his house in areas covered by CARP.
CRFBAI also included in its complaint an engineer who followed suit by constructing a hollow block factory and a bottling company which stock piles cases of soft drinks inside the 71-hectare property.

The CRFBAI claimed that the subject persons and the soft drink company have violated certain provisions of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), thus there’s a need to dismantle the said structures despite the absence of court proceedings.

The agrarian reform land that is located in Barangay Cano-an, Estancia, Iloilo, has been decided to be distributed to almost 400 farmer-beneficiaries of CARP on Oct. 22, 2007. The decision was declared final and executory by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo thru Atty. Manuel B. Gaite, Deputy Executive Sec. for Legal Affairs.

CRFBAI earlier filed a complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman Visayas against the DAR in the region for alleged negligence in implementing the writ of execution.

On the other hand, the National Commission on Indigenous People has started the gradual distribution of land titles to the indigenous people to ensure ownership of the piece of land where they presently lived.

In a recent interview over Iloilo City-based radio station, Alfonso Catolin, regional director of the National Commission on Indigenous People Region 6, said a total of 156 land titles or equivalent to four million hectares of lands have already been distributed to almost one million indigenous people throughout the country.

Catolin said most recipients of the land titles were indigenous people from Region 11.
Catolin said that in Western Visayas, almost 20,000 hectares of land had been distributed to seven groups of indigenous people landholders in the region.

He clarified that beneficiaries of the program could not sell the land titles awarded them nor passed on to non-members of the community of indigenous people. (PNA) /MP