LINGAYEN – The continuing fight to reduce poverty in Pangasinan will be waged with greater vigor with the offer of Gov. Victor Agbayani for the provincial government to assist the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) in rehabilitating its outmoded and virtually non-functioning irrigation systems in the province.

Agbayani renewed his proposal in his state of the province address before the provincial board last Friday, noting that the unproductivity of rice farms in the province is caused by security irrigation water coming from the NIA.

Under this program, part of the more than one billion peso budget of the provincial government this year will be spent to improve irrigation.

The provincial governor revealed that for lack of funds, the NIA is unable to rehabilitate it s aging irrigation system so farmers do not have enough water for their farms, and yet are being billed every year for irrigation service fees.

Due to poor harvest, farmers cannot pay their dues with the NIA and since the latter subsists only on irrigation service fees collected from farmers for its operations it can not properly maintain the irrigation system.

“This is vicious cycle of inefficient irrigation systems because of poor services fee collection; poor collection because of poor harvests; and poor harvests because of unmaintained irrigation systems,” he said.

This situation is not only happening in Pangasinan but also in other agricultural areas of the country, thus the reason for the shortfall in production every year, Agbayani pointed out.

Starting this year, Agbayani said the provincial government will attempt to end the vicious cycle by launching a program to rehabilitate irrigation system of the NIA, starting with the irrigation facility of the UrVil Irrigators Association in Urdaneta City and the town of Villasis.

“The province will fund the rehabilitation (of the facility) in order to break the cycle,”Agbayani said.

He said with increased incomes, service fees collection will consequently improve.
Agbayani said that he and NIA officials agreed that half of the service fees collected will be retained by irrigators’ association under a joint management scheme so that farmers themselves will be empowered to maintain the systems themselves.

The province has already repaired 72 communal irrigation systems while nine more will be rehabilitated early this year. (PNA)