Farm workers belonging to the Negros-based National Federation of Sugar Workers or yesterday challenged the Department of Agrarian Reform to dismiss the Negros Occidental government’s appeal to exempt the 160 hectares agricultural land in Brgy. Sta. Rosa, Murcia, from land distribution, an NFSW press release said.

DAR must stand on its decision covering the area for land distribution. It should expedite all effort to protect the interest of the land reform beneficiaries against Negros Occidental Gov. Alfredo Marañon’s anti-farmer and farm worker food security program that protects vast land holdings from land reform coverage, NFSW secretary general John Milton Lozande said.

In 2003, the farm workers filed a petition for coverage at the DAR region 6. In 2004 the farmer-beneficiaries signed the Application to Purchase and Farmers Undertaking giving maturity to the land distribution process, the press release said.

The APFU serves like a final contract to generate the Certificate of Land Ownership Award to qualified land reform beneficiaries. But in 2010 the provincial government entered the scene and allegedly purchased the land and forcing the beneficiaries to leave their farm lands but the farm worker beneficiaries resisted and stay. Lozande said.

The provincial government has said that it will file criminal complaints against the beneficiaries. Marañon and the provincial board are obstructing a national government program. Clearly they disregard DAR’s authority to implement their ambitious Food Security program that further privatizes vast track of lands for corporate use which in effect deny the beneficiaries lands to till and food security, NFSW said.*

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