A team from the Center for Land Use Planning and Implementation of the Department of Agrarian Reform will be in Negros Occidental Wednesday to inspect the land at the boundaries of haciendas Ilimnan and Arloc in Murcia town, where the Negros First Ranch is located.

Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer for northern Negros Occidental, Teresita Mabunay, said the inspection is one of the requirements before CLUPI could grant the petition filed by the provincial government to exempt the land from Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program coverage.

Mabunay said the inspection will last for two days after which, the CLUPI will decide whether to grant the petition for exemption or not.

Anti-trust law backed

Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali has  urged the country’s more than six million farmers and their dependents to rally behind the move to create an antitrust law to protect them from foreign monopolists out to control the multibillion-peso tobacco industry.

The absence of the law enables big businesses to manipulate prices, control supplies, dictate government budgets through paid taxes and have strong lobbying power to pursue their economic interests, Umali said.

Umali, who is chairman of the House committee on Energy also filed his EPIRA Amendments or House Bill No. 4479 to promote free and fair competition to promote transparency and fair pricing of electricity.

Pay hike up for seafarers

The International Transport Workers Federation announced that seafarers working on ships owned by members of the International Bargaining Forum’s Joint Negotiating Group will receive a 6.5 percent pay increase over the next three years.

The announcement was made as the first round of negotiations on the new IBF framework agreement were concluded in Indonesia early this June.

ITF seafarers’ section chair Dave Heindel, who chaired the negotiations along with Paddy Crumlin, chair of the ITF dockers section and ITF president, commended both sides.

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