MALASIQUI – Recently retired Philippine National Police chief Arturo Lomibao apparently wasted no time in studying the state of irrigation in the country when his appointment as the new National Irrigation Administration (NIA) administrator was announced two weeks ago.

 He began reciting data about irrigation to the local media even before he assumed his post last Thursday.

“Only 45 per cent, or 1.4 million hectares out of three million hectares irrigable lands nationwide are actually irrigated….  the construction of new irrigation facility is from P150,000 to P200,000 per hectare,” he pointed out.

“That will maybe take 320 years more to do all that,” the new administrator said and estimated that the government will need P320 billion to construct these new irrigation systems.

He said that rehabilitation of existing irrigation projects that need repair will be his priority as he again pointed out that of the existing 1.4 million hectares irrigation systems, 30 percent need repair and it will cost government about P50 million.

“Why open new projects when there are already those constructed but only need some repairs?” he added.

He said that the other concern of NIA is the poor collection of irrigation fees from farmers which has reached P6 billion. “Only 50 to 60 percent of fees are collected,” he said.

Lomibao said he will look into the possibility of talking to funding agencies to help the farmers pay their dues.- EVA 

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