WHEREAS, Republic Act 1400 provides for a chairman and two members of the Land Tenure Administration and three divisions, the Legal Staff, the Technical Staff, and the Financial Staff without defining the responsibilities of each of these officials nor the functions to be performed by each of the divisions.

WHEREAS, it will promote efficiency and effect economy to delineate the functions to be performed by each of the divisions as well as to create two more divisions, and to fix the individual responsibilities of the Chairman and the two members of the Land Tenure Administration.

WHEREAS, with the organization of the Land Tenure Administration, there is a greater need for formal cooperation and coordination among the different land reform agencies to integrate the land reform program:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Ramon Magsaysay, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested in me by the Constitution and the existing laws, hereby order and decree that:

1. The Chairman shall have administrative control and supervision over all the officials and employees of the Land Tenure Administration including the two members when not sitting as members of the Administration.

2. The Legal Staff shall be primarily charged with the performance of all the legal work, activities, and functions of the Land Tenure Administration.

3. The technical Staff shall be primarily charged with those activities directly connected with the process of establishing the desirability of purchasing landed estates and their sale to tenants of the public; the compilation and analysis of statistics and survey reports of all the other land reform agencies as well as the preparation of the plans for the systematic opening of virgin land of the public domain and the preparation of schedules of areas of family size farm units.

4. The Survey Services Staff shall be primarily charged with the performance of the surveying and definition of land boundaries both in terms of land to be purchased and the subsequent subdivisions to be sold.

5. The Financial Staff shall be primarily charged with economic evolution and the issuance and control of land purchase certificates.

6. The Collection and Accounts Staff shall be primarily charged with the handling of œaccounts due  the Administration arising from the sale or lease of lands to tenants and shall keep the actual records on the status of every sale on which there remains monies due the government plus cash receipts.

7. The Chairman and the two members shall each be responsible for proper functioning and administration of the division assigned to them by the Chairman.

8. The Chairmen of the Land Tenure Administration and the Agricultural Tenancy Commission, together with the Administrators of the ACCFA and NARRA shall work out in writing a plan of cooperation and coordination which will effect economy and provide for a more effective, complete, and integrated implementation of the land reform program of the government.

9. This order shall take effect immediately.

Done at the City of Manila, this 6th day of December in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and fifty-five and of the Independence of the Philippines, the tenth.

(Sgd.) RAMON MAGSAYSAY
President of the Philippines

By the President:
(Sgd.) MARIANO YENKO, JR.
Assistant Executive Secretary