TACLOBAN CITY – The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) has asked rice farmers in Eastern Visayas to register at its office to avail of the free irrigation service fee (ISF).
NIA Regional Manager Fermina Aling said since they launched the registration campaign two months ago, only 2 percent of farmers in the region showed up at NIA offices to be listed as free ISF recipients.
Those entitled to the free irrigation are rice farmers owning eight hectares or less covered by service areas of the state-run irrigation development provider.
Republic Act 10969 or the Free Irrigation Service Act also condones all unpaid irrigation fees and corresponding penalties of farmers who have the same size of land to NIA.
“Although we have the free irrigation service law, not all farmers are covered by the program. Those covered should be included in the registry of exempted farmers,” Aling told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on Monday.
The NIA regional chief ordered field officials to step up farmers’ meetings, forums, and training to raise their awareness on the registration process as required by the free irrigation law.
As of end of March 2018, the region has 50,756 farmer beneficiaries of national and communal irrigation systems, tilling 61,603 hectares of service areas in six provinces.
With the absence of a database, NIA is clueless on the number of small rice farmers in the region qualified to avail the free ISF.
Irrigation fees, according to NIA’s website, are pegged at the price of two bags of palay (unhusked rice) per hectare during the wet season, and three bags during dry months for diversion cost. A bag weighs 50 kilograms.
For storage system, irrigation fees’ rate is at 2.5 bags per hectare and 3.5 bags per hectare during wet and dry seasons, respectively.
The law, which was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on Feb. 2, however, does not waive irrigation service fees for farmers with more than eight hectares of land. (Filane Mikee Cervantes/PNA)
