When: 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Friday, March 8, 2019, assembly time
Where: Saint Joseph Parish Church, National Highway, Sagay City, Negros Occidental; to march at 8:30 a.m. to Balay Kauswagan beside the Sagay City Hall where President Duterte will distribute CLOAs
What: President Du30: DO 30K hectares for Negros farmers; start fulfilling your CARP promise of getting rid of oligarchic hacienderos
Three thousand Task Force Mapalad (TFM) landless farmers carrying bundles of sugarcane — ala “karga-tapas” — will gather in Sagay City, Negros Occidental in time for President Rodrigo Duterte’s visit to the area, and urge him to fulfill his 2016 promise of getting rid of oligarchic landlords who “get the fat of the land” and pursue his 2018 plan of declaring “the entire (Negros) island as a land reform area.”
As TFM farmers welcome the chief executive’s arrival in Negros for a CLOA-awarding ceremony on Friday, March 8, they will also appeal to President Duterte to sustain the distribution of lands and not make his CARP promise a mere lip service.
They will likewise urge the President to fast-track and complete land distribution nationwide and start the ball rolling in Negros Occidental, where the bulk of the CARP balance can be found.
TFM says the President can immediately distribute 30,000 hectares of Negros farms that have long been placed under agrarian reform.
Many of these landholdings are already in the last stages of CARP processing before they are finally awarded to landless farmers. However, these farms, although already acquired by the government for landless tillers, ironically remain under the control of Negros hacienderos still profiting from the landholdings even though these are no longer theirs.
Also, the assembly, which will be led by TFM’s peasant women leaders during the celebration of the International Women’s Day, will tell President Duterte how their economic hardships — amid their double roles as homemakers and sugarcane workers — are worsened by landlessness, depriving them of a better life, and their children of their right to nutritious food, good education, and adequate health care.
