PARACELIS, Mountain Province—The Cordillera office of the National Irrigation Administration disclosed the planned construction of a P2-billion irrigation project in Barangay Botigue that would provide sufficient irrigation to over 1,000 hectares of agricultural farms was temporarily shelved following the failure of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples to issue the required certificate of pre-condition for the noble government project.
John Socalo, NIA-CAR regional irrigation manager, said the multi-billion irrigation project would have provided the long-overdue needs of some 300 to 500 farmers in four barangays for sustainable irrigation water that would boost their productivity and increase their income from farming once the project shall have been completed through the initiative of the NIA.
“We cannot understand why it is taking the NCIP a lot of time to issue the required certificate of pre-condition for our irrigation project when directly and indirectly affected indigenous peoples have already gave their consent for the realization of the project through the previous conduct of the free and prior informed consent process required under Republic Act 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act,” Socalo said.
The NIA-CAR official admitted that both the NIA and the NCIP agreed to remove the provision in the agreement with the indigenous peoples that contractors of the irrigation project will put up the required bond prior to the construction period considering that the implementing agency has no separate budget for such purpose and that the posting of such bond was never part of the agreements with other indigenous cultural communities in other provinces in the region.
According to him, the NIA did not include in its budget this year the initial fund for the project because of the absence of the certificate of pre-condition from the NCIP which is a major requirement to allow the irrigation project to move on in order to improve the harvest of farmers in the barangays that will benefit from the irrigation project.
Socalo expressed his gratitude to concerned provincial and municipal officials who helped convince the indigenous peoples to endorse the implementation of the project. They were able to see the importance of establishing the irrigation facility in order to increase the yield of farmers who had been longing for government interventions that would result in uplifting the state of agriculture in the eastern part of the province.