SAN JOSE CITY – Bishop Roberto Mallari of the Diocese of San Jose, which covers the towns and cities in the northern and some western and eastern parts of Nueva Ecija, called on the Catholic faithful in his diocese to do something as the government’s land reform program ends this month.
He said that although the program had already spent billions of pesos, with certain attendant anomalies reported, the job still remains unfinished, it must go on.
“I call on everyone to pray collectively to open the heart of those in government to do something to help (the helpless) whose only hope is God,” Mallari said in his pastoral letter read Sunday in all the churches of the diocese.
Mallari, in his letter, said there are still 6,000 hectares in Guimba, Cuyapo and Nampicuan towns which still have land distribution problem as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) ends this month. In addition, about 1,200 hectares in Carranglan, Nueva Ecija are still facing (agrarian reform) problems.
He recalled the call of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to the government to extend the implementation of the land reform program but to no avail. He also said that there were many groups which pushed for the passage by Congress of the Agrarian Reform Bill (House Bill No. 252) which calls for the land distribution of lands to the landless for free but was also ignored by the lawmakers.
“If the government and the lawmakers are blind on the calls to help the poor, who then can they rely on?” the bishop asked in his letter written in Tagalog. “When will they give importance to the call to help the poor especially the farmers?”
Mallari said in his letter that the CARP was the 5th law to address the 75-year-old land reform program. He also said it was already the 26th year when then President Corazon Aquino recognized and approved CARP as a “social justice program”.
“The government already spent P342 billion since 1988 to distribute 5.6 million hectares of land but 1.2 million hectares still remained undistributed,” the bishop said citing a report of the Department of Agrarian Reform.
The bishop lamented that the implementation of the land reform program and the distribution of the lands became very slow. He was also saddened, he said, when he learned that some of the lands distributed fell into the lands of those who were not qualified to receive them as beneficiaries as “it was done in anomalous manners”.
Mallari called on the Catholic faithful to coordinate to the Social Action Commission of the diocese here for the “appropriate actions that must be done to help those who now rely for help only form God”.
He did not say, however, what actions his diocese, through the diocesan Social Action Commission, will do as regards the unfinished job under the soon-tobe- terminated land reform program of the government.
The bishop’s pastoral letter was issued in time for the church’s observance of the Feast of Holy Eucharist.
