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Noynoy visits Luisita as farmers line up for money claims


President Benigno Aquino III visited the sprawling, family-owned Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac province, even as its farmers on Saturday continue lining up for their share of the financial package the management is offering. A GMA Flash Report said the President arrived at the 6,000-hectare sugar plantation – ownership of which was recently "settled" through a controversial compromise deal between the Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) and some of its farm workers - on Friday night to spend the weekend there. It was not immediately clear if Aquino, who maintains a hands-off stance on the deal, would proceed to the estate's clubhouse where HLI officials are distributing the P20-million portion of the P150-million financial package for the plantation's over 10,000 farm workers, the report added. Complaints from farmer-beneficiaries continued to hound the distribution of the financial assistance, now on its third day, the report said. [See related story: Hacienda Luisita Inc. gives away P20M to farmers] The money that farmers got ranged from as high as P9,000 to as low as P1, depending on the farmers' shares of stocks and the number of hours they worked in the farmland. The report said one farmer only got P2,000 for the two decades of work she rendered for the HLI. The number of farm workers at Hacienda Luista was around 6,300 in 1989. It ballooned to the current estimate of 10,000 as a result of HLI's continued hiring of workers even after claiming it was losing money when it stopped operations after the so-called "Luisita Massacre" in 2004 that left seven dead and 121 farmers wounded. [See related story: How a workers' strike became the Luisita Massacre] The HLI had said the P150-million financial package that came with the compromise agreement, signed last August 6, was its act of "goodwill" towards the beneficiaries. But farm workers opposed to the compromise deal has branded the financial assistance as a form of "bribery" to pave the way for the Supreme Court approval of the agreement. [See related: Luisita farmers to join National Day of Outrage on August 18] The HLI on Wednesday submitted to the high court its petition to approve the compromise agreement, along with a list of all the 10,000 beneficiaries and a referendum document showing that over 7,000 farmers supported the deal, most of whom chose to retain their shares of stocks in HLI instead of claiming parcels of land. As of Saturday morning, the television report said that of the 10,000 or so beneficiaries, only around 1,000 farmers from the 11 villages covered by the vast plantation have yet to claim their financial assistance, according to the HLI. The distribution of money will go on until next week. A female farm worker, who had earlier claimed her share in the package was worth only P160, went back to the queue on Saturday, this time, to claim her child's financial assistance. To her surprise, she found out her child only was entitled to P1. Disappointed, the farmer just went back home and no longer bothered to claim her husband's share, the report said. Meanwhile, others were hopeful that they would be getting bigger amounts once the remainder of the package is released. The remaining P130-million portion of the financial package will be given to the farmers once the high court approved the deal. Church execs steps in Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo has asked President Aquino to intervene in the mess, warning him against remaining "neutral" on the compromise deal. "To serve the interest of justice, we appeal to President Benigno Aquino III to fulfill his pro-poor platform of governance by implementing the agrarian law and by not honoring the compromise deal that ran counter to the constitutional mandate that the entire 4,415 hectares of land should be distributed to the plantation farmers," he said. Pabillo appealed that the compromise deal be set aside and allow a genuine and transparent process of consultation with the farmers to allow them to understand the full range of options available and the advantageous counter-proposal that will truly benefit their sector. Pabillo cited an order from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council in 2005 to redistribute 4,415 hectares of the 6,500 hectares under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, and not only the 1,366 indicated in the compromise deal signed last August 6. He said the HLI should not insist on offering to farmers the retention of their shares under the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) scheme, because the DAR had already revoked the scheme in the same 2005 directive. "The SDO scheme facilitated the virtual surrender of the farmers of their rightful claims to the agricultural lands of the hacienda in exchange for a pittance or meager shares of capital stock and production shares," he said. For his part, Tarlac Bishop Florencio Cinense appealed to critics of the compromise deal not to meddle in the issue and let the farmers decide for themselves. "Kasi sila affected dyan eh... Kung akala nila ito ang makakatulong sa kanila, hayaan na lang natin (The farmers are the ones directly affected. If they think the agreement will help them, let them decide for themselves)," Cinense said. — LBG, HS, GMANews.TV

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