CARP deserves a zero budget – farmers’ group

CARP deserves a zero budget – farmers’ group

“While landlords receive hefty payments, massive landlessness persists in the countryside. Millions of farmers are displaced due to massive land grabbing and land use conversion. Rural poverty and hunger is on the rise.” Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano

By RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — Given the Department of Agrarian Reform’s poor performance in land acquisition and distribution, peasant groups questioned the huge allocation for DAR in the proposed 2012 national budget.
DAR will get P17.9-billion ($419.74 million) or 9.82 percent increase from this year’s budget. At least P10.3 billion ($241.53 million) of the proposed budget is allotted for the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) and its extension law.

In its 2010 report, DAR reported its Land Acquisition and Distribution (LAD) accomplishment from 1972 to December 2010 to have already reached 6,617, 296 hectares. Since CARPer’s enactment in 2008, DAR said 154,007 hectares were distributed. But only 292,753 hectares were acquired through compulsory acquisition or only 6.9 percent of the target under LAD, underscoring the worsening circumvention of land distribution.

“A big chunk of DAR’s budget for CARPer will go to landlord compensation” Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano said. “DAR, through the LAD provision of CARP and its extension law, has conveniently became a milking cow of big landlords and maintaining monopoly over large landholdings.”

(bulatlat file photo / bulatlat.com)

Mariano branded the fund allocation for CARP in the 2012 DAR budget as “wastage of public funds.”

Funds for landlords

According to the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department of the House of Representatives, since CARP implementation in 1988, the total allotment released for the implementation of CARP had reached P207 billion ($4.85 billion) and 94.7 percent of this amount was already utilized as of December 2010. Of the total allotment, 55.4 percent went to DAR and 31.7 percent was released to the Land Bank of the Philippines.

“Where did these funds go? Obviously not to farmer-beneficiaries who are in dire need of support services from the government,” Mariano said..... MORE

Source:  BULATLAT.COM

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/08/05/carp-deserves-a-zero-budget-%E2%80%93-farmers%E2%80%99-group/