Scrapping of One Million Jobs program was a fatal mistake

The Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino – Puwersa ng Masa yesterday said the decision of the Arroyo administration to scrap the "One Million Jobs, One Million Hectare" program was a fatal mistake which would set back the state efforts to ease the problem of massive rural poverty.

The LDP said the Arroyo administration should reconsider its decision to stop the program which former Agriculture Secretary Edgardo Angara had crafted as a "viable and well-studied program" aimed at easing rural underdevelopment and poverty.

"The least that it can do is to fine-tune the program. Or redesign it. Scrapping the program was the equivalent of denying the rural areas available strategy for combating the scourge of poverty in the farming areas," the LDP said in a statement.

The "One Million Jobs, One Million Hectare" program was supposed to harness one million hectares of idle and unproductive lands into full productivity. Low-income farmers would participate in the planting and production of yellow corn and other commercially-marketable crops.

Under Angara’s work program, the country‘s agri-business firms would act as "stewards" and will be responsible for the marketing of the farmers’ produce.

Several agri-business giants had agreed to the marketing tie-up with the farmers.

The LDP said that "most of poverty is rural." Around 30 percent of the country‘s poor live in the rural areas.