40 Samar farmers receive e-titles generated under SPLIT

By GABRIEL MARK OCENAR, DAR-Samar
June 25, 2023

SAN JORGE, Samar – Forty agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) from this town now savor the feeling of a landowner after they received their respective individual land titles from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) last month.

Armando Fabillar, 53, one of the recipients of the electronically generated Certificates of Land Ownership Award (e-CLOAs), shared “We are grateful to our president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., and to the DAR for making our dreams to own a land come true.”

Fabillar, a father of two children and a recipient of a 2.5-hectare lot, was among those awarded with a collective CLOA in 1992.

To strengthen property rights of the ARBs to the lands they are tilling, DAR subdivides the lands covered by collective CLOAs and issues individual land titles under the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) project.

On May 11 this year, Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer II (PARPO II) Alfonso Catorce led the distribution of 40 e-titles generated under the SPLIT at this town’s municipal covered court.

During the said occasion, Catorce urged the ARBs not to sell their awarded lots acquired under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

To be able to avail of the various assistance extended to ARBs, PARPO I Segundino Pagliawan advised them to join agrarian reform beneficiaries organizations (ARBOs) in their area.

Municipal Agrarian Reform Program Officer (MARPO) Ricardo Flor shared that the 40 e-CLOAs cover an aggregate area of 70.5 hectares situated in six barangays – Lapaz, Rosalim, Sinibaran, Sapinit, Bulao, and Mabuhay.

Earlier, the president ordered agrarian reform secretary, Conrado Estrella III, to fast track the distribution of individual titles to the ARBs under the World Bank-funded SPLIT project.

Meanwhile, Vice Mayor Jay Bisnar, who graced the said affair, expressed gratitude to the DAR for the various assistance it has been providing to the farmers, not just in San Jorge but throughout the province.