MANILA: Thousands of workers will lose out when a plantation owned by President Benigno Aquino’s family is carved up for its farm hands next year, an official said yesterday.
The 4,300-hectare Hacienda Luisita north of Manila will be distributed to its labourers after years of delay, Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes said. Even then, only about 6,200 of more than 8,000 workers would own plots from the break-up, he said.
About 2,000 would not get land because they were not fully employed in 1989, the year after the land reform law was passed. Many of those excluded were “transient workers” who got part-time jobs for two months each year cleaning up the farm immediately after harvest.
The division would amount to about 0.66 hectares for each farmer, who would need to pay about P80,000 ($1,836) over 30 years for the title.
Aquino’s mother and then-president Corazon Aquino, signed the law in 1988 which would have covered the farm. Her family, the Cojuangcos, tried to skirt the law by converting parts of the land to non-agricultural use and giving workers shares in a company controlling the farm. The Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that the family must sell the land to the government, which would sell it to the farmers on easy terms. AFP
