By Cha Monforte, Rural Urban News
march 2
COMPOSTELA- Fears continue to linger here that more violent confrontation would erupt anew between the groups declared by the Dept. of Agrarian Reform as agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and the groups of banana workers who are currently working and still in possession of the remaining 41-hectare banana plantation in Barangay Osmena in this town.
Last Friday tension mounted again in the barangay, which is just a few kilometers away from the poblacion here, as some 20 ARBs physically entered to some 1.9 hectares of banana plantation under contract of one Federico Blanco, an area reportedly included in the claims of the DAR-installed ARBs.
Meanwhile, reports said that the banana farm workers protesting the DAR’s continued installation of ARBs have planned to stage peaceful mass actions of their wives and children outside their banana farms they hold on this week to dramatize their plight.
The banana workers belonging to Nagkahiusang Mamumuo sa Compostela (Namasco) claimed that the ARBs are “fakes” and “dummies” saying that they were former plantation workers, employees and officials who were already paid of retrenchment and retirement packages in 1994 when the contended land was still leased by the Ayala-owned Davao Fruits Corporation (DFC) for corporate banana farming.
Namasco chairman Zosimo Ombajin claimed that 170 of his members were the actual tillers of some 98 hectares of land since 1998 after the DFC’s banana production lease contracts expired and they became farm workers under small-scale banana contract growers.
But 49.72 hectares of this were already lost as the DAR-installed ARBs forcibly occupied the area August 11 last year dislocating over 100 of Namasco members form their livelihood.
The DAR early last year issued 16 Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) certificates covering over 112 hectares for 167 ARBs.
Ombajin said the 16 CLOAs eat up the remaining 41 hectares that Namasco still currently possessed and the other neighboring plantations areas directly tilled by Liberty and Selecta farmers’ cooperatives, other banana contract growing groups in the area that ally with Namasco.
Tuesday last week the DAR provincial office tried but fail to physically install undetermined number of remaining ARBs to some 63 hectares after Namasco and other farmers groups put up barricade to resist a DAR regional special order on new ARB installation.
The ARBs, numbering about 200, were accompanied by provincial agrarian reform officer Eduardo Suaybaguio, Compostela municipal agrarian reform officer Maria Gloria Delan, Congressman Manuel “Way Kurat” Zamora and Mayor Reynaldo Castillo.
Before Namasco barricade, Zamora and Suaybaguio though read notes and the installation order for the ARBs.
On that day, a brief stone-throwing made by both sides occurred injuring four from the group of ARBs and one from Namasco.
Zamora and Castillo were already out from the area when the stone-throwing incident erupted.
Compostela PNP chief Mohammad Dampac though managed to pacify the two warring groups.
Namasco legal counsel Joerge Rapista questioned the order citing that DAR had not yet conducted an investigation as ordered by DAR national office on Namasco’s dispossession from half of their land lost last year allegedly due to collusion of DAR personnel and Zamora , and on the issue on company dummies placed as ARBs.
Rapista further questioned where the areas and boundaries of the CLOAs issued are located citing that the DAR had not yet even conducted surveys over the areas claimed by the ARBs.
He pleaded for status quo pending determination of “real ARBs” and resolution of Namasco’s legal questions that he said might undo what had been lost to the actual tillers due to DAR installations.
Suaybaguio said he would only follow the special DAR regional order directing him to install the ARBs adding that he was sticking with the CLOAs and that the determination of the ARBS was already final and executory,
He also belied allegations on the placing of dummies to the declared ARBs saying they duly complied with agrarian reform laws and processes.
But Rapista questioned that the Suaybaguio’s special order was not even signed by DAR regional director Datu Yusoph Mama but only initialed by an officer in charge.
On the other hand, Cong. Zamora said he only accompanied the ARBs Tuesday last week as he was furnished of the copy of the order.
But in his arguments with Atty. Rapista he was obviously siding with the ARBs, said of Namasco officer Pantaleon Libre Jr.
During last year’s installation the congressman was reportedly present when the ARBs broke up the barricade and policemen disarmed security guards and forcibly made a takeover to over half of their land.
Namasco had lodged late last year a petition for the cancellation of the CLOAs even while it also prayed to DAR for their members’ inclusion as ARBs.
In a press conference Friday, Namasco officers said that they were not informed in the first place that the land they were tilling were placed in the 90s under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program of the government even as they alleged there was also a fake barangay captain who certified for the retrenched who were already paid and the dummies as the ARBs.
“We could still agree to strike a win-win solution to avert imminent violence due to threats of occupations of the questionable ARBs, that is for us to remain in the remaining 41 hectares we’re holding on. They already have more than half of the land we tilled. We will never leave this land left to us as the leaving would mean our empty stomachs,” Ombajin said. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News)
Filed under: Atty. Jeorge Rapista, banana growers compostela, Compostela Mayor Reynaldo Castillo, Compostela Valley provincial agrarian reform officer Eduardo Suaybaguio, Congressman Manuel “Way Kurat” Zamora, Davao Fruits Corporation, Federico Blanco, namasco, Atty. Jeorge Rapista, banana growers compostela, Compostela Mayor Reynaldo Castillo, Compostela Valley provincial agrarian reform officer Eduardo Suaybaguio, Congressman Manuel “Way Kurat” Zamora, Davao Fruits Corporation, Federico Blanco, namasco
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