DAR TAKES PAMPANGA SCHOOL PROPERTY FOR LAND REFORM
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO— The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has transferred to the government over 310 hectares it took from the Pampanga State Agricultural University (PSAU) without the knowledge of school authorities.
PSAU president Honorio Soriano questioned the transfer as it was done without the approval of the school board.
Only the board is empowered to dispose of properties under Republic Act No. 10605, the law converting the Pampanga Agricultural College in Magalang town into PSAU, Soriano said in an online briefing on Thursday.
But the DAR does not need the approval of the PSAU board, said Joseph Sagampud Jr., the agency’s provincial officer, in a text message.
The DAR was implementing Executive Order No. 75, issued by President Duterte in February 2019, that authorized the agency to, among other things, identify and acquire government lands suited for agriculture and distribute them to qualified beneficiaries.
Only 132 hectares left
In the case of PSAU, the DAR has targeted to take away 376 ha from the state university’s 508-ha property, possibly leaving it with just 132 ha.
The sequestered land portions will be given to qualified farmers.
Soriano sought to retain more lands for academic and agricultural projects, saying the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), or RA 6657, exempts state colleges and universities from CARL coverage.
Soriano also asserted that the “rightful beneficiaries of EO 75 in PSAU should be actual occupants and tillers.”
These tillers and settlers occupy around 150 ha of the PSAU land, he said.
Soriano said PSAU was set to raise the issue to the ad hoc committee created by the Office of the Solicitor General in March to mediate disputes between the Commission on Higher Education and the DAR.
Sagampud earlier said that protests by PSAU should be raised to the adjudication board.
Segregation survey
In a March 25 dialogue, PSAU and DAR officials agreed to do a segregation survey in the 310 ha covered by the agrarian reform program to separate lands that were being used by the university.
Currently, at least 210 ha are utilized for academic purposes. These include 110 ha for growing tamarind, 10 ha for a coconut project, 3 ha for a dairy goat project, and 50 ha for a coffee plantation.
An area covering 5 ha is used as a training area for the police’s Special Action Force, 10 ha for gene banking forestry resources, 110 ha for bamboo propagation, 10 ha as mulberry farm, and 250 square meters for volcano-monitoring station of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
When created through an edict of the Spanish queen Maria Christina in 1886, the agricultural experiment station, which would later become PSAU at the foothills of Mt. Arayat, originally spanned 900 ha.
The US government expanded these to 1,050 ha, turning it into a national institution called Pampanga National Agricultural School in 1938.
Soriano said the government previously took more than 500 ha for land reform under Presidential Decree No. 27 of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.