Cebu court orders farmers to vacate land

CEBU CITY — The Regional Trial Court has ordered 106 farmers to stop occupying and cultivating the 56-hectare lot in Pung-ol, Sibugay, now owned by Ayala Land Inc. (ALI).

In a writ of preliminary injunction, Judge Simeon Dumdum directed the farmers to stop entering, occupying and tilling the land.

ALI posted a P500,000 bond for the issuance of the writ of preliminary injunction.

For many years, the farmers tilling the land were forced to abandon their farms after the area was declared a tourist zone under Presidential Proclamation No. 2052.

Unusually, while the 56-hectare lot is part of the 808-hectare area declared as "tourist zone," the court nevertheless awarded the area to ALI.

Earlier, ALI said that on four occasions between September to October this year, the farmers, armed with farm hoes and knives, forcibly entered the guarded property.

The farmers denied the allegation. They invoked provisions contained in the order issued by then Agrarian Reform Secretary Ernesto Garilao that legitimate farmer-beneficiaries inside the tourist zone-declared area be paid disturbance compensation and provided a relocation and resettlement plan.

The farmers, however, said Ayala Land failed to provide them with a resettlement plan and only 18 of them were paid disturbance fees.

But Judge Dumdum of RTC Branch 7 did not put weight on whether the names in the list are legitimate farmer-beneficiaries or not.

Instead, he cited an investigation conducted by the Municipal Agrarian Reform Office showing that no ocular inspection was conducted by the office to determine the correct amount of compensation for the farmers because they had long abandoned their tillage.

This was further validated by ALI project development officer Fausto Lim III who testified that the land had been idle and uncultivated since 1993.

By this apparent abandonment, the court found no cause to allow the farmers to possess and cultivate the land based on Garilao’s order of execution in 1998.

The court said, "There is no attempt at all to stop, modify or in any way interfere with Secretary Garilao’s order, whose expeditious execution the court, in fact, encourages."

The court, however, added: "No one should use Secretary Garilao’s order as an excuse to trespass to farm a piece of land that not only belongs to another person but moreover has been officially removed from agriculture...It must be protected from human occupation." — Freeman News Service