The titling of lands given to agrarian reform beneficiaries has hit a snag as thousands of titles have been found to overlap with ancestral lands.
As a result, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has temporarily excluded more than 100,000 hectares of landholdings from the titling program.
These tracts of land are covered under 13,604 Collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CCLOAs) that were found to have potential overlapping ancestral problems in connection with the implementation of the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) project.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III alerted field implementers of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) to be wary of lands suspected of having overlapping issues between agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and indigenous communities in pursuit of their task of subdividing CCLOAs.
“Remember, time is of the essence. We cannot afford to be entangled in a complicated situation, which will only tie our hands by inadvertently covering lands that were partly or wholly owned by indigenous communities,” Estrella said.
Joey Sumatra, an engineer and DAR assistant secretary for policy, planning and research office, who also serves as the national SPLIT project director, advised field CARP implementers to exclude all lands with potential overlapping issues until the DAR and the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) issue the guidelines through a joint administrative order.
Sumatra has provided all field CARP implementers a list of 13,604 land titles, covering a combined area of 109,223 hectares nationwide, for their guidance.
Among the 15 DAR-recognized regional geographical areas, Davao (Region I) has the greatest number of collective CLOAs with overlapping issues
at 3,996, covering a combined area of 32,548 hectares, followed by Soccsksargen (Region XII), with 2,718 titles covering 24,691 hectares, and Northern Mindanao (Region X), with 2,281 titles covering 20,298 hectares.