The Lapanday Foods Corporation last week assailed a series of violent acts perpetrated by a small group of protesters that has prevented its workers from harvesting inside a 150-hectare Cavendish banana plantation in Tagum City’s barangay Madaum.
“These acts have turned the situation into a deadly cat and mouse game with the lives of our workers at stake,” Hernani Geronimo, Lapanday human relations department head told a press conference in Davao City.
He said this group of protesters, backed by armed men, also cut down thousands of fruit-bearing banana plants inside 15-hectare area.
Lapanday legal counsel Atty. Leilani Espejo bared the company suffered at least $250,000 in estimated damage arising from plants destroyed.
She said the violent acts began on December 8 when the protesters disarmed company guards and entered company premises.
“They were arrested and turned over to the police but were freed soon after,” she said, adding that robbery and other cases have been filed against 36 suspects.
Chief finance officer Manolito Dagatan said Lapanday is obligated by its marketing contract to buy the produce from the plantation up to the year 2045.
The company has contract with a separate and bigger cooperative to buy its produce from an area of 430 hectares. But the protesters, which also formed themselves into an association, ‘wanted to take over 150 hectares of the total area,’ according to Lapanday.
The Lapanday officials said the real conflict actually boils down to the group of protesters and a bigger cooperative and not between the protesters and Lapanday.
“Hence we urged authorities to implement a court decision that addresses this concern,” said Espejo.
She said the Department of Agrarian Reform can also step in to resolve matter and to put things in order.
Espejo said the company was willing to sit down with the protesters to iron out differences but to no avail.
She said Lapanday is also looking forward to the office of City Mayor Allan L. Rellon to be able to help bring about a peaceful settlement of the conflict.
Rellon was scheduled this Monday to meet with Lapanday and officials of the cooperatives involved in the conflict in his office.
The protesters had earlier accused the company’s security personnel of firing at their group, injuring seven of them, two in critical condition.
Those injured were identified as: Taldan Miparanun, 16; Jose Balucos, 42; Emmanuel Buladaco, 46; Belardo Francisco, 53; Jojo Gomez, 26; Rico Talagaga; and Joseph Bertulfo, 58.
The protesting famers belong to the Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association Incorporated which company said represented a minority of the ARBA beneficiaries.
The continuing protests were seen as part of the farmers’ campaign to reclaim the land that LFC turned into a plantation in the late 1980s.
