Acting Negros Occidental Gov. Isidro Zayco yesterday said he agrees with President Gloria Arroyo’s call for Congress to reform agrarian reform in her State of the Nation Address.

The president said reform is needed to transform beneficiaries into agribusinessmen.

Zayco said the present form of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program needs to be reviewed and it is up to the Congress to decide whether it should be continued or not.

The CARP law ends next year.

Zayco said there are a lot of gray areas in the CARP that need to be studied and corrected to prevent conflict between landowners and beneficiaries.

The government, by merely distributing land to beneficiaries without proper support services, does not improve the status of farmer beneficiaries. In fact they retrogress, he said.

Proper guidelines must be set if CARP is to continue to ensure the success of beneficiaries, he said.

Landowners must also be paid in full for their land, not just 30 percent cash and 70 percent in bonds payable in 10 years, he said.

Rep. Jose Carlos Lacson (Neg. Occ., 3 rd district) yesterday said he will support a resolution set to be filed by Rep. Ignacio Arroyo (Neg. Occ., 5 th district) and Rep. Jeffrey Ferrer (Neg. Occ., 4 th district) calling for a review of the CARP.

Zayco also welcomed the president’s master plan for infrastructure in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

Maybe she will not be able to fulfill all of them by the time her term ends, but at least they will have been started and can be continued by the next president who will already have a master plan in place, he said.

Zayco said the president did not mention the Kabankalan airport in her SONA because it is funded by the city of Kabankalan and the provincial government, unlike the ones she enumerated that are nationally funded.

But the president is aware of the Kabankalan airport project as she had been briefed on it during her recent visit to Negros, he said.*CPG

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