CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – With the expiration of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) last June 30, the Philippines, whose economy is significantly still agrarian, has remained without any agrarian reform law. Anakpawis Partylist representative Fernando Hicap thus reiterated his call for his colleagues in Congress to pass House Bill 252 or the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB).
House Bill 252, entitled: “An Act Instituting Genuine Agrarian Reform in the Country and Creating the Mechanism for its Implementation and for Other Purposes” or GARB proposes, “free land distribution” for farmer-beneficiaries and “nationalization” of large parcels of lands under the control of foreign agri-business corporations Hicap noted that Republic Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) expired last June 30 “after more than two decades of miserably failing to address landlessness in the country.”
“Our country which has an agrarian economy now has no law to promote the interest of poor, landless farmers,” he lamented. The House Committee on Agrarian Reform has been discussing House Bill 252 since Monday. Anakpawis said the bill is fully supported by farmers from Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon, Hacienda Luisita, Hacienda Looc, Hacienda Dornilla Araneta, Araneta Estate, Fort Magsaysay military reservation, Ayta farmers from Capas military reservation, farmers cultivating Central Mindanao University (CMU) lands in Bukindon and other areas with agrarian dispute.
