Irrigation project delays Kalinga rice planting season

BAGUIO CITY—It’s the season for planting rice in Kalinga province, but farmers have not been able to start in the last two weeks due to delays in a World Bank-financed irrigation project to harness the Chico River there.

Church leaders, environmentalists and farmers’ groups have sent letters to the government, hoping to convince the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) to finish the Upper Chico River Irrigation System (UCRIS) which its contractor could not complete.

“The failure of the contractor to install the main canal radial control gates and lifting mechanisms … has disrupted the farming calendar to the detriment of farmers in Tabuk City in Kalinga, and in Quezon town in Isabela,” according to a July 13 resolution passed by the Upper Chico River Irrigation System Federation of Irrigators Association Inc. (UCRIS-FIA).

The delays affect 6,801 hectares of Tabuk farms and 8,451 ha of farms in Quezon, or a total of 15,252 ha of rice lands.

In a text message, Michael Lumas-i, president of the UCRIS-FIA, said he would bring the matter to NIA Administrator Florencio Padernal this week because the delays would have an impact on succeeding planting seasons.

Two separate resolutions passed on Friday by the Kalinga-Apayao Religious Sector Association and the environmental group, Kalinga Anti-Pollution Action Group (Kapag), asked President Aquino to intervene, saying the start of the wet cropping cycle had been pushed back by 15 days (as of July 31) due to the delayed construction work.

They said the project should have been completed last year.

Kalinga is classified by the Department of Agriculture as the Cordillera region’s top rice producer. In 2013, farmers there produced 174,012 metric tons of good quality palay, records showed.

Benito Espique, NIA Kalinga provincial officer, confirmed the farmers’ report in a telephone call from Tabuk on Sunday.

He said the agency’s contractor failed to take advantage of a June 15 to July 15 maintenance period to install the mechanisms needed to control water flow to the farms.

He said NIA cut off irrigation supply during the maintenance period and turned down the contractor’s request for an extension “because we need to send out water for farming now.”

Espique said NIA would determine the fate of the contract because of the contractor’s work delays of 52.8 percent.

UCRIS-FIA’s resolution urged Padernal to allow NIA personnel to install the sluice gate and radial gate of the irrigation system, and clear it of debris, so water could once more flow to their farms.

Complaining that the poor work by the agency’s contractor smacked of “economic sabotage,” the farmers also asked the agency to cancel its contract, penalize the firm and investigate the delays.

“NIA has been studying what it could do to fix this problem without disrupting the terms of the project itself because it is overseen by the World Bank,” Espique said.

The church leaders, farmers and environmental groups wanted speedy action.

The Kapag resolution said: “We are anxious that the disruption of the cropping pattern will subject the rice crops to the cold and stormy weather beginning November, which will likely decrease the yield by 5 to 10 percent. The delay could also [push back] the next cropping [period] to as late as May when water in the CRIS could not supply the entire coverage area due to low water in the Chico River [which is usual for that] time of the year.”

The group urged Mr. Aquino to act, “in the context of your administration’s determined efforts to achieve food self-sufficiency and the fact that the 10,075 ha in the coverage area of the CRIS accounts for P1 billion worth of rice per cropping season.” Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon