NEWSFLASH

CORDILLERA EX-REBELS FINALLY GET FARMS

Baguio City, Feb. 3, 2000 The Manila Times reports that the general headquarters of the Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army (CPLA) in Kalinga province will finally be transformed into a model community under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Horacio Morales has directed that qualified CPLA members be immediately installed in a disputed 170-hectare area in sitio Ileb-nambaran of Tabuk town. Ileb-nambaran is the CPLA’s Zone-2 general headquarters currently occupied by nearly 100 war-trained fighters now turned farmers.

The area is being converted into a Special Tribal Agrarian Reform Community (STARC) so it can be given preferential attention in the delivery of support services according to an integrated area development plan.

Morales acted on CPLA officials’ complaint on that some local DAR personnel unreasonably delayed the awarding of land titles to them.

Led by Corazon Cortel-Balweg, widow of slain rebel priest and CPLA founder Conrado Balweg, the CPLAs narrated their difficulties in introducing developments to the once talahib-covered barren land in order to survive. They alleged that the registered but absentee owners and a political figure forced them out. “Some of our huts were burned and our plants uprooted,” they said.

Morales viewed the awarding of farm lots as another way of integrating CPLA with the rest of society.

DAR records show that around 20 members of the CPLA will be the first batch of beneficiaries to be issued Certificate of Land Ownership Award, while more than 100 others await the subdivision of their lot claims.