About 50 members of Task Force Mapalad yesterday stormed anew the compound of the Provincial Agrarian Reform Office in Dawis, Bacolod City to protest what they call the snail's pace implementation of agrarian reform in Negros Occidental.

At around 3 p.m., they forced their way inside, prompting the DLR personnel to seek police assistance. Eleven policemen from the City Mobile Group and the Police Precinct 1 were deployed.

No one was reported hurt.

The protest action, participated in mostly by beneficiaries of Hacienda Velez-Malaga in La Castellana, came a day before the Senate budget hearing for the Department of Land Reform.

TFM-Negros president Rodito Angeles said in a press statement that not only has the DLR proved itself negligent and incompetent, but has actually reversed its mandate of distributing land to the tillers by helping landlords keep their hold on the properties that do no longer belong to them.

Angeles called on the Senate to give the DLR a one-peso budget.

He said that, despite the Supreme Court ruling giving the DLR exclusive jurisdiction over agrarian reform issues, and the subsequent dismissal by Regional Trial Court Judge Reynaldo Alon of his previous injunction and cancellation of the Certificate of Land Ownership Award to Hacienda Velez-Malaga, formerly owned by sugar planter Roberto Cuenca, the DLR still refused to install the beneficiaries.

But Gideon Yonque, provincial agrarian reform officer I, told the DAILY STAR that their office continues to work for the installation of the Hacienda Velez-Malaga beneficiaries, though Cuenca had filed a motion for reconsideration.

He said that they also need to "regenerate CLOA with the Register of Deeds."

Yonque added that just this month, the DLR-Negros Occidental has installed Task Force Mapalad beneficiaries in Cambuktot, Mansalanao and Palatpat in La Castellana and Brgy. Tadlong, Sagay City.

Our communication lines are always open for them. We're always ready to dialogue with them, he said.*NLG/DMG

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