The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said Tuesday that its employees strongly opposed the agency’s merger with the Department of Agriculture (DA) as proposed by the Senate.
 
In a statement, DAR said “this was the cry of the Department of Agrarian Reform Employees Association (DAREA) of Calabarzon region during their peaceful protest’’ in the DAR Central Office last Monday.
 
“No to merging of DAR and DA,” the DAREA Region 4-A employees said.
 
The Senate proposed the move supposedly to “rightsize’’ the bureaucracy to save more funds amid the pandemic.
 
According to DAREA- Calabarzon, “throughout the years the DAR has been championing the cause of small farmers in the countryside and its mergence to DA might affect its delivery of support services to the farmers.’’
 
“The DAR is giving agricultural lands to landless farmers. We provide them with support services such as livelihood assistance, agricultural infrastructures, farm machinery, and equipment, among others,  and we also empower farming communities and cooperatives to help improve their living conditions. The DAR also offers agrarian legal assistance and quasi-judicial services to farmers that other government agencies do not perform,” it added.
 
Last week, the DAREA members nationwide also held synchronized tarpaulin raising activities to express their sentiment against the merging.
 
The tarpaulin stated, “We stand as one DAR. No to merging. Department of Agrarian Reform Panatilihin, Palakasin.”
 
In stressing their opposition to the merger, DAREA-Pangasinan said that DAR is not a redundant agency because it has its own mandate, the lead implementing agency of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
 
One of the objectives of CARP is to empower agrarian reform beneficiaries in their economic condition, provide social justice especially to small landowners, and improve agricultural production and productivity in the countryside, DAR noted.