TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, Jan. 21 (PIA) -- After decades of studies on how to improve the land reform program, agrarian reform beneficiaries could get their individual and not communal titles of their properties anytime soon.

This as the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) accomplished over their target for the preparation of the final transfer of these properties to the farmer owners.

Of the target 2,100 hectares of farmland readied for field validation in preparation for the parcelazation to individual titles, we have accomplished 2,704 hectares, according to Bohol Provincial Agrarian Reform Officer Dr. Ronald Pumatong. 

This was announced by Pumatong during the recent Kapihan sa PIA at the PIA Bohol studio, and aired live over DyTR and PIA Bohol YouTube and Facebook accounts.

Pumatong also discussed another DAR program which now allows the individual agrarian reform beneficiary to own a clearly-delineated farm as stated in his own individual titles.

Through the Support for the Parcelazation of Lands for Individual Titles (SPLIT), the previously issued collective certificate of land ownership awards (CLOA) would now be partitioned for award to individual beneficiaries, said Pumatong.

The 2,323 agrarian reform beneficiaries tilling parts of the 2,704 hectares of land issued to them in the recent years are now on their way towards owning individual titles split from the communal lands awarded to them by the government for being in food production.

The awarded CLOAs then were not technically delineated as to who works on that particular lot, and farmers later realized part of what they farmed does not anymore belong to their awarded lots.

While some farmers are involved in food production, others awarded the same CLOA work only until they want, compromising their overall harvests.

Awarding collection CLOAs hastened the process of giving lands to farmers, but farmers could not really own the land which they can call their own, while the collection CLOA prevents them from investing in improving the land because the collective CLOA cannot be put up as loan collateral, added Pumatong.

He also shared that a project management office for SPLIT has already been going around Bohol to validate and inspect areas with communal CLOAs to be included in the SPLIT Program.

The PMT and its field validation teams have also tracked the inherent legal and technical problems which have plagued the country’s flagship social reform program.

Bohol still managed to put up 325 individual titles in computerized form for 217 agrarian reform beneficiaries, Pumatong said.

These were part of the 642 hectares of the 656 agrarian reform beneficiaries which the DAR has processed to the Register of Deeds for eventual release of computerized titles, he summed up. (RAHC/PIA7 Bohol)