VLT/DPS
Replete with anomalies

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

One of the landlords� designs to evade the implementation of land reform is the Voluntary Land Transfer/Direct Payment Scheme (VLT/DPS). It has been the most often used means to supposedly implement the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), especially since 1996. The VLT/DPS was likewise approved by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) under the Macapagal-Arroyo regime as a strategy for CARP�s implementation.

Under the VLT/DPS, landlords choose favored "beneficiaries" who will directly "compensate" them. DAR�s only role is to provide certificates and other official documents, conduct surveys and receive transfer taxes.

Even the investigation conducted by the Audit Management and Investigation Committee of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (AMIC-PARC) proves that VLT/DPS is now the scheme of choice of landlords to evade CARP. In some areas, like Pangasinan, up to 95% of supposed CARP implementation is effected through this scheme.

Some of the usual forms of corruption related to VLT/DPS that have been exposed include the following:

• Many of those chosen as "beneficiaries" are unqualified, including the landlords� underage children, other relatives or dummies. According to AMIC-PARC, "some reported instances of land distribution are means of passing on inheritance."

In Agno, Pangasinan, 95% of those reported by the Municipal Agrarian Reform Office as land reform "beneficiaries" came to be so through VLT/DPS and most of them were relatives or persons in the employ of, and chosen by, the landlords.

• In many cases, the landlords connived in listing the names of "beneficiaries" even without the latter�s knowledge. In several of the cases investigated, the "beneficiaries" were neither farmers nor persons who had the intention to farm; they likewise did not know where the lands were located. In Iligan City, for example, it was discovered that 26 "beneficiaries" of VLT/DPS were not farmers. Among them were a pharmacy manager, a printing press manager, nine students and two long-time residents of the US. In Esperanza, Agusan del Sur, six VLT/DPS "beneficiaries" were found to be neither farmers nor residents of the area: two were in Manila, two were in Bohol, two were in Sarangani and another has been working abroad for two years.

July 2002
English Edition

	Editorial: Genuine agrarian reform�s only hope lies in revolutionary struggle
	VLT/DPS Replete with anomalies
	Reports from Correspondents: More than 11,000 farmers benefit from agrarian revolution in Northeast Mindanao
	Reports from Correspondents: Successful anti-usury campaign launched in Cagayan
	Conditions of farm workers in Hacienda Luisita: Rich soil for revolution
	Guingona booted out of DFA for opposing Balikatan
	US military intervention
	US rocked by financial scandals
	News