AN official of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said farmers and fishermen will have the opportunity to submit “uncensored and unadulterated proposals” that will form part of the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017 to 2022.
The proposals are among the expected outputs of a two-day rural development summit, which kicked off on Thursday at the Waterfront Insular Hotel in Quezon City. The proposals will be submitted to President Duterte, who ordered the holding of the summit as part of the crafting of the country’s five-year development plan under his administration.
Agrarian Reform Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Luis Meinrado C. Pangulayan, head of the organizing committee, said around 300 individuals from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the Department of Agriculture (DA), the DAR and various stakeholders took part in the summit.
Essentially, the summit would push the rural sector’s agenda of developing programs and solutions to problems on food, land and environmental protection
The participants will come up with a list of priorities and recommendations on food security, land-tenure improvement and environmental protection and will be submitted to the Office of the President for consideration in the drafting of the PDP 2017 to 2022 by the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).
“After the plenary, there will be several workshops and breakout sessions, where we expect inputs from farmers and fishermen,” Pangulayan said.
The DAR, he added, expects agrarian stakeholders to discuss the passage of Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB), which ensures the free distribution of land to landless farmers.
“On the part of the DAR, we expect clarity on the passage of the proposed genuine agrarian-reform program. Every component of program implementation under genuine agrarian-reform program, hopefully, would be taken up,” Pangulayan said.
One of the workshops, he stressed, is about tenurial security.
“Under tenurial security, it is not limited to farmers actually owning the land but they must also be provided support mechanism to continue owning and use the land productively. There will be no tenurial security if they are forced to sell or rent their land, illegally,” he said.
Under agrarian justice, the rights of farm workers and farmer-beneficiaries. The speedy resolution of harassment suits filed by landowners will be discussed,” he added.
Last, Pangulayan said under food security, the workshop will focus on improving the lives of farmers and fishermen through support mechanism.
“We will no longer just count the number of kilometers of roads produced or bridges built or the number of seeds and fertilizers provided but will focus on how it impacted on the lives of the farmers. We expect the stakeholders to come up with uncensored, unadulterated proposals for the Philippine Development Plan. We will receive these proposals and we will submit it to the President before the end of December for integration in the Philippine Development Plan,” he said.
During the summit, Pangulayan said the DAR, DA and DENR would give updates, statuses of the programs, and plans on the first day of the workshop and presentation of the recommendations to Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco on the second day.