CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) accused yesterday the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) of “colluding” with the families of Pres. Aquino and Interior and Local Governments Sec. Mar Roxas in allegedly shortchanging land reform beneficiaries at Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac and Hacienda Araneta in Bulacan.
This, after KMU found out that both their families had hired the same fi rm to develop their lands into commercial and residential areas. The DAR’s “shrinking of lands” covered in Hacienda Luisita and the exemption from coverage of Hacienda Araneta were all in accordance with the plans of their landowners, said KMP Secretary General Antonio Flores.
He said the plan was pursued by the Luisita Realty in Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac and and the Araneta group in Hacienda Luisita and Tungkong Mangga in San Jose del Monte in Bulacan, by hiring Noni Mendoza and Associates (NMA) to map out details.
The NMA website said that “since 1993 NMA has provided Land Planning, Site Planning and Landscape Design services for Hacienda Luisita.” The KMU noted that the master plan for Hacienda Luisita prepared by NMA revealed a design to convert much of the hacienda into a residential area integrating “working and living environments” and “relating land uses to a complete transportation system.”
The plan cited three phases for an industrial park in the hacienda with provision for “a clear hierarchy of land use units from neighbourhoods to village centers, town centers and a central business district.”
It also involved minimizing “the use of automobiles by creating an extensive internal pedestrian system integrated with an open space system weaving throughout the communities.”
The NMA website also cited the Araneta Properties Inc. as owner of the hacienda in San Jose del Monte in Bulacan and the Sta. Lucia Realty and Development Inc. as its “client.”
The KMU noted that the site for a proposed commercial center in the area is within the contiguous 1,500 hectares of Araneta Properties. Flores noted that the hiring of the same NMA firm in both the vast properties of the families of the President and Roxas indicated common plans to shortchange land reform beneficiaries so that plans laid out by the firm could be implemented.
The KMP called on the Senate and the House of Representatives committees on agrarian reform to jointly conduct a probe on “the DAR’s complicity in circumventing agrarian reform” in the two properties in Tarlac and Bulacan.
