BY JP LOPEZ

SEN. Loren Legarda yesterday called for a probe on the unpaid compensation of former owners of lands acquired and distributed under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

She said the Department of Agrarian Reform, in its accomplishment report, showed it has distributed 3,960,255 hectares of agricultural lands as of end of December 2007.

Of the 2,241,192 hectares of private agricultural lands, 990,282 hectares of land had been acquired and distributed under the CARP but the former owners have yet to be compensated by the government through the Land Bank of the Philippines, Legarda said.

Legarda filed Senate Resolution 449 to determine remedial measures to reform CARP.

"There is a need to look into the inability of the government to sufficiently provide for landowners compensation which is one of the essential components of the program," she said.

"It is imperative to determine the extent to which government can pay for landowners' compensation due and the viability of accruing additional payables in the event that the agrarian reform law is extended," she added.

The Department of Budget has said that without a new law extending and replenishing the Agrarian Reform Fund, the P100 billion that R.A. 6657 or Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law and R.A. 8532 or Agrarian Reform Fund Law appropriated for CARP having been used up as of 2005, would mean that there will be no legal basis for government to allocate and release funds for the program.

The Alternative Law Group in a forum said it holds lawmakers accountable for the failure to extend CARP for five more years.

The lawyers group said there is a conspiracy between some lawmakers and land owners to block the passage of House Bill 4077 which seeks to extend CARP for five years with reforms.

The House instead passed Joint Resolution No. 21 which would supposedly extend only the land acquisition and distribution component of CARP until December this year.

ALG said the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) was enacted in 1988 to implement this constitutional mandate. CARP therefore is a continuing program and shall only be terminated until its original scope and mandate has been completed, they said.

They said RA 8532 was enacted in 1998 mainly to provide additional funding to complete the program and not primarily to extend it.

The Calatagan Farmers Task Force said that given the present concern over food security and the rampant conversion of agricultural lands, "the passage of CARP extension with reforms bill is all the more important."