ILOILO CITY – Officials of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and its regional offices from the Visayas cluster met with officials of the Land Registration Authority (LRA) on Tuesday to solve delays in the processing of land titles.
Lawyer Karlo S. Bello, DAR Undersecretary Field Operations Office (FOO), said there are pending requests for RP titling or titling in the name of the Philippine government.
The process with DAR, he added, has been completed and the ball is now with the LRA for the issuance of title.
“Land acquisition and distribution process involves other line agencies of government. To be able to have an output we have to do line coordination with other government agencies. Meaning, we also rely on the performance of other government agencies to have that output in the land acquisition and distribution,” he said.
After the issuance of the RP Title comes the Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA).
LRA follows a process, which may take long depending on the status of the land to be issued a title.
Bello said the conference was the second with the first one held n Mindanao, Two more will be held in Manila and Bicol.
After their meeting, he said LRA committed to augment their personnel and machines and establish better and regular coordination.
There are almost 10,000 hectares of lands nationwide with documents pending at the LRA.
Apart from documents with other government agencies, Bello said they are targeting 46,000 hectares to be processed this year.
DAR also works with the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on the issuance of titles.
Another issue that they tackled is the CLOA registration. Under the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III, some 118,000 hectares or about 80,000 titles were not awarded to farmers.
“It defeats the purpose of the CARP that farmers should get hold of their CLOAS,” he said.
Meanwhile, DAR Regional Director for Western Visayas Stephen Leonidas said they are still in the process of completing the accounting of documents that are pending with LRA.
There are more or less 5,000 individual CLOAS in Negros Occidental awaiting new titles
Leonidas admitted that the delay in the processing was due to the Philippine Land Registration Information System where documents are being uploaded to the LRA central office after submission to the regional office.
It was suggested that the registration be localized. (Perla Lena/PNA)
