TACLOBAN CITY — A total 31 farm tenants — including former rebels in Calubian town — Leyte province have received their individual land titles as an early Christmas gift from the Department of Agrarian Reform, making them owners of the land they have been tilling for decades.

Calubian municipal agrarian reform program officer Maximo Castañeda Jr. led the distribution of the 31 individual certificates of land ownership award to the agrarian reform beneficiaries in a simple ceremony in Barangay Enage on Wednesday.

The CLOAs covered a combined area of 39.95 hectares, which forms part of the 58-hectare land owned by Caridad Engage, covered under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program's land acquisition and distribution component.

Castañeda said 10 of the 31 beneficiaries are former rebels.

"Providing land to the landless gives these former rebels the opportunity to livelihood, which is DAR's contribution to end local communist armed conflict, a whole-of-nation approach to address insurgency in our country," Castañeda said.