ILOILO CITY—Farmers from Western Visayas region were the country’s first recipients of the individual land titles distributed by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
“Mapamana na eto sa mga inyong anak (Your children can now inherit this),” DAR Secretary Bernie Cruz told the beneficiaries during the recent ceremonial distribution of 179 land titles in Ibajay town, Aklan province.
The land titles generated by the computerized system of Land Registration Authority (LRA) is part of DAR’s Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling or SPLIT Project, which is funded by the World Bank.
The SPLIT Project aims to resolve problems with the Collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CCLOAs), which lumped farmer beneficiaries in one land title.
The CCLOAs often caused confusion and misunderstanding among farmer beneficiaries, especially when it comes to the size of the land area they can use.
Cruz explained that with the individual land titles, each farmer knows exactly the land area they are tilling as agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs).
The initial 179 individual land titles distributed by DAR covers 249.8389 hectares of agricultural land across Western Visayas.
DAR-6 Regional Director Sheila Enciso said that identified farmer beneficiaries from Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Guimaras, Iloilo, and Negros Occidental provinces were able to get their individual land titles.
Meanwhile, the SPLIT Project aims to divide and issue individual land titles for 1.368 million hectares of lands nationwide.