HON. MICHAEL “MIKEE” L. ROMERO, Ph. D.
1-PACMAN Party-list
Assistant Majority Leader
Vice Chair, Youth & Sports Development and 2 other Committees
BREAKING NEWS: FREE IRRIGATION SERVICE NOW A LAW
REP. MIKEE ROMERO URGES NIA TO IMMEDIATELY STOP COLLECTION OF IRRIGATION SERVICE FEES AND SWIFTLY EXECUTE ISF DEBT CONDONATION AND WRITE-OFFS
As one of the authors of House Bill 2150 that later became part of what is now the Free Irrigation Service Law (RA 10969), I express the fervent hope that the Department of Agriculture and the National Irrigation Administration will be able to immediately implement the newly-signed law.
RA 10969 allows the NIA three months to issue the implementing rules and regulations. Probably, they need not use up all of those three months, since they have known for many months now that the signing of the law was for certain.
NIA should stop collecting irrigation service fees upon effectivity of RA 10969 15 days after publication in the Official Gazette and not a day later because this is the intent of the law, specifically Section 3.
One item they can quickly address is the condonation and write-off of irrigation service fee (ISF) loans, past due accounts, and penalties. This provision (Section 4 of RA 10969) will bring immediate relief to farmers nationwide. Just one implementing issuance from NIA will erase all pending ISF loans, past due accounts and penalties.
Section 3 and Section 4 of RA 10969 are the immediately doable. The other provisions—Section 5 to Section 9 will take more effort and can by the subject of a later NIA directive. (END)
Reference:
http://www.congress.gov.ph/legisdocs/basic_17/HB02150.pdfLinkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=89159.0