DAR announces achieving targets

As President Rodrigo warned of firing inept agrarian reform officials, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) announced that it has achieved its targets in 2018.

DAR was conducting its assessment and planning conference in Iloilo City when President Duterte expressed during separate events in Lucena City and Pasay City his dismay over the “slow” conversion of lands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

DAR Secretary John Castriciones highlighted the department’s achievements, such as the distribution of 60,000 hectares of land through emancipation patents and certificates of land ownership award.

He said that DAR has so far distributed a total of 4.8 million hectares of agricultural lands to more than 2.8 million ARBs.

“The DAR has enough resources to conduct a national survey to measure the status of the lands distributed to our agrarian reform beneficiaries and agrarian reform beneficiaries organizations,” Castriciones said during the agency’s 2018 yearend summative assessment and 2019 planning conference from Jan. 22 to 25.

“We will be able to achieve more, we will be able to distribute more,” he pointed out.

The said activity is conducted to analyze the previous year’s sectorial performance on Land Tenure Security Program, Agrarian Justice Delivery Program, and Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Development and Sustainability Program vis-à-vis its approved targets and fund utilization.

DAR also reported that it has turned over 5,718 sub-projects to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARB) nationwide.

DAR Undersecretary for Foreign Assisted Projects Bernie Cruz said that at present, these infrastructure projects benefited 910,656 ARBs of 1,355 agrarian reform communities nationwide.