Maguindanao”•Forty-nine former combatants of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have received Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) from the Bangsamoro Government’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform in Datu Odin Sinsuat, this province.
Dr. Mohammad Yacob, MAFAR minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) said the CLOAs covered small part of some 3,000 hectares of government-acquired lands region-wide, under the agrarian reform program.
Moro farmers have averaged 7.87 metric tons per hectare of yield in the latest production tallies of corn harvests in the current cropping-season.
Corn farmers of Barangay Manungkaling in strife-torn Mamasapano, Maguindanao topped the chart with 9.24 MT/hectare, followed by Barangay Masigay in Datu Piang in Maguindanao (7.69MT/ hectare), Barangay Kulasi in Gen. Salipada K. Pendatun, Maguindanao (7.67 MT/hectare), Pikeg, Sharif Sayduna, Maguindanao (7.65 MT/hectare), and Barangay Damatog in Northern Kabuntalan, Maguindanao, (7.5 MT/hectare).
Yacob said past governments ostensibly made the process of land titling difficult to Moro people. Offices of the Bureau of Lands were only situated in Manila and much later, in Zamboanga City.
Instead, he said the process of land dispossession has more systematically affected the Moros and Indigenous People’s (IP) Communities in Mindanao, even prior to the approval of the 1935 Constitution.
Article XVII, Section 1(17) provides that “Citizens and corporations of the United States shall enjoy in the Commonwealth of the Philippines all the civil rights of the citizens and corporations (of the Philippines), respectively, thereof.”
Also, Section 1(12) of, and the Ordinance Appended to the 1935 Constitution provides that “the Philippines recognizes the right of the United States to expropriate property for public uses, to maintain military and other reservations…”
At that time, Yacob noted, the Moro people were far from being keen or even aware of Filipino citizenship, and were too hesitant to be called “Filipino.”