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[av_heading heading=’Farmers’ group at odds with breakaway members’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY MAE SINGUAY
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Tuesday, April 18, 2017
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A group of agrarian reform beneficiaries reported to the police how breakaway members tried to occupy their farm in San Enrique, Negros Occidental.
They believe a bigger farmers’ group was behind the takeover attempt, according to Edgar Dela Rama, chairman of the ECJ Farmworkers Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Multipurpose Cooperative (Efarbemco).
More than 60 farmers and their families “trespassed” the Efarbemco-owned land planted to sugarcane in Barangay Baliwagan, San Enrique on April 11, Dela Rama told the municipal police station.
They put up three tents. “As a result, many of the sugarcane plants were damaged,” read part of a police blotter report.
Dela Rama and other Efarbemco officials tried to meet with their breakaway members and discuss their grievances before the Holy Week but they were “rebuffed,” the cooperative leader said.
On April 10 the breakaway members “tried to barricade entry points [at the farm] to prevent tractors from coming in.” They also “threw a Molotov bomb, which nearly burned one of the tractors,” Dela Rama said.
Those who occupied the farm were “armed with deadly weapons, such as sulpak or improvised shotgun, samurai, baton, teargas, bolo, espading or cane cutters,” he claimed.
Farm security personnel managed to drive them away on April 12, he said.
They believed Task Force Mapalad, where breakaway Efarbemco members are affiliated, was behind the takeover attempt, said Dela Rama.
Breakaway members asked that the certificates of landownership award (CLOAs) for the 4,659-hectare land be given to them individually, but this is “impossible” because the CLOAs were collectively issued to Efarbemco as an organization, Dela Rama said.
Efarbemco offered to pay any member who wished to withdraw. Around 600 beneficiaries — including 140 of the 441 breakaway members — opted for this, he claimed.
“We’ve given them everything within the bounds of the law,” he said. “Why would they continue attempting to take over the lands and disrupting our operations?” A similar incident happened last year, he noted.
Efrabemco filed a petition before the Provincial Agrarian Reform Adjudicator seeking to resolve who the rightful owners of the farms are. There is no decision yet, Dela Rama said./PN
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