PRESS RELEASE l 21 October 2011
Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay)
Reference: Gloria Arellano, national sec-gen l 09213927457
As the week-long peasant protest will end today with a multi-sectoral march to Mendiola, and a celebration of the life of the most verated peasant worker Gregorio 'Ka Roger' Rosal later in UP Diliman, the urban sector joined the march of the peasant with calls for a genuine agrarian reform, which according to a militant urban group "is the only solution to the housing and employment crises in the urban centers."
Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap national secretary-general Gloria Arellano said that "while most of the poor in the cities have descendants from, and even having permanent residence in the countryside, we need not reiterate the fact that the peasants' calls are also the sectors' call."
The recent development projects boasted of by Aquino under the Public-Private Partnership program post a parallel threats to both sectors, according to Arellano. "Some of these include big mining industries, plantations and central districts that strip of both the rural and urban poor their land," she adds. In some special cases like with the MRT 7, a priority PPP project to be implemented next year will take away lands occupied by the urban poor and peasants at the both ends of the railway line. Residents of North Triangle area in Quezon City, as well as from other communities along Commonwealth Ave join hand with the peasants from Tungko-Mangga in Bulacan in defending their lands.
Faulty agrarian reform program
Arellano also pointed out that the government’s 'faulty' agrarian reform program is the main driver of urban migration leading to more populated cities and tighter employment competition for almost 30 million urban poor in the country, thus aggravating urban poverty.
“The past and present administrations have failed in years in ensuring the crucial task of distributing lands to millions of landless rural poor, as well as acting on the issue of rampant land-grabbing by big landlords,” she added.
“CARPEr has never answered the lack of land to till in the countryside by millions of peasants, driving them towards cities and urban center in search for alternative livelihod source, and reliable jobs,” she added. “In fact, 60% of all agricultural lands or almost 9 million hectares are privately owned by just 13% of landlords in the Philippines. More than 20% of agricultural lands or 3 million hectares are owned by just 9,500 individuals,” Arelllano cited to show the gravity of the problem.
Unless land monopoly and feudalism end now, according to Arellano, millions of poor peasants will continue to flock the cities, and contribute to the growing number of urban poor population. From data used by the United Nations, from 2005 to 2015, the estimated average growth of capital cities in the Philippines or urban agglomerations is 28%. By 2030, the urban population is estimated to reach 85 million or approximately 70% of the total population.
CARPer as landlord’s milking cow
CARPer is nothing but an instrument of landlords to legalize landgrabbing and land use conversion, and to justify the brutal displacement of farmers, according to Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, a national peasant group.
Based on KMP’s reckoning, during the first year of CARPer’s implementation, only 64,329 out of the 163,014 hectares targeted for land distribution were processed and the bulk 41,000 hectares were placed under the Voluntary Offer to Sell (VOS) category. A negligible 1,777 hectares were put under Compulsory Acquisition (CA). The peasant group said landlords were hell bent on exploiting the provisions of the law that authorizes them to dictate the value of their lands. CARPer, the group said, was landlords’ milking cow.
Alternatives to CARPer
“CARPer, as the government’s land reform program, will never contribute to its effort in addressing the widespread poverty, and therefore should be scrapped,” Arellano said.
“Unless the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB), the militants’ alternative to CARPer is passed, the agrarian revolution in the countryside that is very popular among the rural poor and facilitated by communist rebels through armed struggle will remain justified,” she said.###
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