The Department of Agrarian Reform on Thursday issued a Cease and Desist Order (CDO) against the Lapanday Foods Corporation as the controversy over land ownership in said banana plantation threatens to spill over into the New Year.
The CDO, issued by DAR Secretary Rafael Mariano, ordered the prohibition against LFC and its security guards from forcibly evicting the members of the Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association, Inc. (MARBAI) from the banana plantation.
Members of MARBAI continued with their camping inside the banana plantation since last week.
Seven of their members were wounded when the camping area was allegedly fired upon by the security guards of LFC on December 12.
DAR’s order came out after MARBAI president Merly Yu requested the agency to intervene in their case.
In the issued CDO, DAR said that based on Section 46 of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Administrative Order (A.O.) No. 7, Series of 2014, a cease and desist order is issued “at any time prior to either the finality of the order of the Secretary or the perfection of an appeal, in cases where any party may suffer grave or irreparable damage.”
Last week, Secretary Mariano also called on Regional Director John Maruhom and Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer Jocelyn Seno to secure police or military assistance to ensure that there will be no disturbance in the peaceful possession and occupation of the farmers in the 145-hectare banana plantation.
DAR said that despite a final and executory December 15, 2015 decision ordered by the Provincial Agrarian Reform Adjudicator Jose Nilo Tillano in favor of the MARBAI farmers, still, the farmers were not installed inside the banana plantation.
In October this year, Secretary Mariano, in a visit to MARBAI members who were already in a camp-out outside the gate of LFC, assured them that DAR would push for their peaceful installment into their landholdings.
MARBAI farmers have been staging a camp-in protest at the banana plantation after successfully reclaiming the land last December 9, or six years after the LFC ousted them out from the area.
MARBAI members are farmer beneficiaries who were given a collective Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) in 1996 under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
Each of the 159 farmers owns a 0.79-hectare piece of the banana plantation.
MARBAI president Yu said that they were forced to enter a Banana Sales and Marketing Agreement with the LFC who buys their products for export.
Unfortunately, she added, they were tricked into selling high-grade bananas which were poorly classified for a lower price, thus resulting to a measly Php2,000 monthly income.
The agreement has caused the farmer beneficiaries to accumulate a debt of almost Php1 billion to the LFC, she lamented.
