TACLOBAN CITY – As New Year comes in, some 3,585 farmers from different parts of Region-8 started a new life. This time as landowners to the land they are tilling.
Four days before Christmas, Assistant Secretary Kashmir Leyratana of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Regional Director Tiburcio Morales, Jr. handed to said farmers their certificates of land ownership award (CLOAS) in separate occasions as the latter’s early Christmas present.
Morales distributed in the morning of Dec. 21 in Bilian, Biliran CLOAS covering more than 300 hectares of agricultural lands situated in this province to about 70 farmers, while in the afternoon of the same day at the DAR Regional Office in Tacloban City, Leyratana handed to another 3,515 farmers the remaining titles covering almost 7,000 hectares located in the provinces of Leyte, Southern Leyte, Samar, Northern Samar and Eastern Samar.
The CLOAS signify the farmers’ full ownership to the land they are tilling after having been awarded to them under the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
As landowners now, these farmers need not worry anymore about the rental they used to pay for the use of the land nor fear of getting ejected as tenants.
Instead, they now have to learn to manage the land and the gains they are going to reap from it.
