The Task Force Mapalad criticized Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes for excluding 77,000 hectares of untitled private agricultural lands from the coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, a press release from TFM said.

The group said De los Reyes should have known a decade ago that jurisdiction over untitled PALs had been given to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources by virtue of Republic Act No. 9176, which was enacted into law on November 13, 2002.

The group said De los Reyes is “offering another excuse for the low accomplishment rating of his department as far as the land acquisition and distribution component of CARP is concerned.”

It said “the president gave de los Reyes a lease on life in June, when he was retained to work on LAD. It is now up to the President to see how he performed in the last six months and whether he has become a liability to his administration or not,” it said.

Since July 2012, the DAR has been producing reports that tended to condition the minds of the public that LAD cannot be completed before the CARP Extension with Reforms Law ends in June 2014, the group claimed.*

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