Senators led by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile assured Catholic bishops yesterday that they would pass the bill for a five-year extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program before Congress adjourns its regular session in June.

During a three-hour dialog with representatives of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines at the Senate president?s office, the senators also pledged to allocate funding for the CARP but said they have not yet agreed on the amount.

The bill extending CARP, endorsed by the committee on agrarian reform chaired by Senator Gregorio Honasan, appropriates the amount of P147 billion.

?We told them that we will work out the land reform program during the next few weeks of session of Congress,? Enrile told newsmen after the meeting.

?We will really pass it. The only thing is we have to see to it that the law is properly implemented, the necessary credit facilities and farm inputs will be extended to the agrarian reform beneficiaries so that the program will be meaningful to them.?

The CBCP delegation was led by Bishops Roderick Rebillo, Teodoro Bacani, Jesus Mercado and Deogracias Iniguez.

Lawyer Christian Monsod, legal adviser of Task Force Mapalad, and farmer-leaders also took part in the discussion.

Other senators who met with the Catholic bishops were Jinggoy Estrada, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Rodolfo Biazon, Francis Pangilinan, Richard Gordon,  Panfilo Lacson and Honasan.

Zubiri said the senators and the bishops agreed that loopholes in the CARP law and the implementing mechanisms must be remedied to avoid the problems that humstrung its implementation during the last 20 years.

He said they deplored several instances when agrarian reform beneficiaries  failed to make the agricultural lands productive due to lack of capital and necessary support services from the government.

Zubiri said they wanted to avoid a repetition of the rampant practice of beneficiaries selling or abandoning the lands, which makes land reform a farce.

He cited the sad experience of his family which gave up 3,000 hectares of land in favor of farmers in Bukidnon. After two or three years, he said the ownership of the parceled lands had changed.

?We have to make an honest-to-goodness accounting of the lands that have been acquired and distributed to farmers under CARP,? he said. Fel V. Maragay