The more than 6,000 farmers from Cotabato province who recently received their certificates of land ownership award (CLOA), are optimistic that their lives would change for the better since the land they are tilling are now their own.

Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones described the event as “historic,” noting that it was the biggest single CLOA distribution that happened in the country and was even attended by President Duterte himself.

President Duterte personally handed to 6,442 beneficiaries their respective CLOA consisting 11,431 hectares of land and covering18 municipalities of Cotabato.

The beneficiaries expressed their gratitude to President Duterte and Castriciones for their “commitment and determination to help the poor and the powerless.”

“If not for them, we will forever be at the mercy of our landlords and could not expect to get out of poverty. But we can now see a brighter future since we will now be tilling our own lands and selling our own produce” one of the beneficiaries said.

Engineer Reynaldo Anfone, provincial agrarian reform officer 2 of Cotabato said the distribution of CLOA was the result of a coordination meeting held in August last year with the Land Registration Authority (LRA).

He said the distribution was initially delayed due to the problem of registration of intended beneficiaries.

Just lately, the LRA Manila office handed six scanners and uploaders for the CLOA that addressed the problem of registration.

Anfone said that aside from the CLOA, support services such as inputs, planting materials, tractors, trucks, and technology will be given to the beneficiaries.

Gov. Emmylou Mendoza said the historic CLOA distribution was a good year-end gift from the government to people of Cotabato province.

She said the provincial government of Cotabato genuinely supports the national government’s land reform program and believes in the administration’s sincerity to address landlessness which is among the roots of conflicts in the country.