ILOILO CITY – Despite findings that world-famous Boracay Island is not suitable for farming and revoking Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs), the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) vowed to allocate government land for the Ati Indigenous Peoples (IPs) who had been evicted.
GUARDS secure the 1,282-square meter land where the Ati tribe lived after the land given by the Duterte administration was revoked with finality last March. (Ati Boracay)
DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III reiterated on Monday, April 8, that the 44 Ati tribe members will be given government land for humane consideration.
Estrella, who was in Negros Occidental, made the assurance after guards of a private land owner barricaded the 1,282-square meter property late in March.
Ati members had been living in the property since 2018 when CLOAs were issued by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Boracay land reform that year was part of the Duterte administration’s massive rehabilitation program in the country’s most famous beach destination. Duterte announced that the land will be given to “farmers.”
In April 2019, private land owner Digna Elizabeth Ventura filed a protest before the DAR-Western Visayas after the Ati IPs were given a CLOA under her property.
In 2020, the DAR-6 archived the case pending soil analysis.
In 2023, Ventura obtained certification that the land is “not suitable for agriculture” from the Bureau of Soils and Water Management (BSWM), an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA).
This led to resolutions by DAR-Western Visayas Regional Director Sheila Enciso that ordered the cancellation of the CLOAs.
Last month, the Office of the DAR Secretary cancelled the CLOAs with finality.
Estrella said that the 2018 action of the Duterte administration to issue CLOAs had no legal basis.
It is unclear what government land Estrella was referring to or where.