VOL. 10 ISSUE 74 • FRIDAY - SATURDAY, JULY 14 - 15, 2017
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BEST DEAL Marsman, ARBs ink‘win-win’agreement T
HE Marsman Estate Plantation, Inc. and its agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) have reached yet another milestone in their decades-long partnership following the signing of a new agribusiness venture agreement (AVA) that would provide workers in the MEPI banana farm a significantly improved package of land rental, salaries and benefits that remain the highest in the industry. Both the MEPI management
and members of the Davao Marsman Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Development Cooperative (DAMARB) described the amended AVA as a “winwin” solution that would guarantee the ARBs an unmatched array of benefits, which include a signing bonus and retroactive and advance rental payments for each ARB-signatory amounting to P105,000 as well as a regular monthly income for each of them. MEPI president Ante-
ro Sison, Jr., who reported this positive development in a letter dated June 21 to President Rodrigo Duterte, said majority of the ARBs working in the Marsman plantation have already signed the amended agreement. “As of this writing, 489 out of the 793 ARBs have already signed the amended agreement. At least 18 more ARBs who are residing outside Davao del Norte and/ or are sick or incapacitated have committed to sign through their
representatives. As your Excellency has voiced in a number of occasions, the Republic continues to be run under democratic principles and hence, the wishes of the majority must prevail,” Sison said in his letter to the President. Hernando Rivero, the chairman of the board of DAMARB, said the organization’s members find the amended agreement “to be reasonable and economically beneficial for themselves, the
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P 15.00 • 20 PAGES MAKING DO. A pupil puts his school belongings inside a plastic bag as his father fetches him from school using a bicycle under the heavy downpour in Davao City on Thursday. Lean Daval Jr.
EDGEDAVAO Sports PAC IT UP
Boxing expert thinks Manny should retire now
New sultan to fight rise of extremism
T
O strengthen and sustain Islamic traditional principles against extremism, Moro leaders here installed on Wednesday a sultan to help prevent the spread of jihadist and Islamic militants in the province. Sultan Mohamad, younger brother of Maguindanao Governor Esmael Toto Mangudadatu’s father Puwa Mangudadatu, has replaced Datu Sabdullah Mangudadatu as “Sultan sa Buayan.”
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