The Department of Agrarian Reform has issued guidelines and procedures on the parcelization of landholdings with collective certificates of land ownership award through Administrative Order 02 of 2019 to stabilize ownership, tenureship and control of the lands awarded to agrarian reform beneficiaries.
Secretary John Castriciones said pursuant to Section 25 of the Republic Act 5567 as amended by Section 10 of RA 9700, DAR is mandated to immediately undertake the parcelization of CCLOAs over lands that were not collectively farmed or operated in an integrated manner.
In the past decades, many landholdings were awarded to farmer-beneficiaries under a collective and non-subdivided form of ownership wherein qualified beneficiaries may opt for collective ownership, through farmers’ cooperatives, associations or some other form of organizations for the issuance of CCLOAs, he lamented.
“There are reports from the field implementers and civil society organization regarding disputes or controversies among ARBs with existing CCLOAs due to boundary conflicts, inclusions and exclusions of agrarian reform beneficiaries, and other conflicts resulting to the splitting of groups into sub-groups and co-owners opting for individual ownership,” he said.
There have been landholdings covered with CCLOAs, which have been acquired and distributed under financing from the Land Bank of the Philippines, where the government has not been able to collect land amortization, he said.
The farmer-beneficiaries have not been able to fully pay the lands for them to become full owners due to the difficulty in generating the land distribution and information schedule, he added.
Through parcelization, DAR would subdivide and determine the exact meters and bounds of the areas, allocate lots for each beneficiary in a CCLOA, determine common use areas and portions with common service facilities, and establish areas capable of being alienated and disposed of by the government, the DAR chief said.
CCLOAs refer to existing and registered certificates of land ownership award issued by DAR to farmers’ cooperatives, associations, other organized groups, or group of beneficiaries who are not yet formally organized.