By John Ruiz IIIBayan had been opposed to big dam projects in the province. They are expensive and cause dislocation to poor people, destruction to the environment and burden to the farmers. Other irrigation system technology like series of small water impounding, solar-powered water pumps and other existing cost efficient and environmentally friendly technology of irrigation systems should be studied as alternatives. Unless otherwise it is not service that our bureaucrats and technocrats are after, but personal benefits from “SOPsâ€. The bigger the cost of the projects, the happier they are. Huge debts were being accumulated by the government because of these projects and they passed it on to the poor people through taxes and high irrigation water fees.
In the case of Malinao dam (Bohol Irrigation Project Phase I), a land-leveling project through the National Irrigation Farmers was conducted with assurance that water would flow to the new rice fields. More than a thousand hectares of land were bulldozed and hundreds of farmers acquire huge debt in the forms of loans as payment to the bulldozer service. After completion of the projects, most of these lands became unproductive, no water reached the supposed rice fields and other secondary crops hardly grow in the bulldozed land. What is ironic, 10 years after and that is now, farmers are now being asked to pay their debts as stipulated in the Memorandum of Agreement of which the farmers had no copy at all as supposed other party to the agreement.
Those who were able to benefit from Malinao dam water were being charged with high irrigation service fees. 300 kilos of palay or P3000 were being asked for every hectare of land per year. Water is a right and therefore should be free, if P3000 is being charge for the services of the dam and NIA office to the rice-farmers; it is indeed an expensive fee for a very minimal service. Farmer-beneficiaries get water from the dam only when it is rainy season, some farmers even said “before the dam the rains is free, after the dam we pay when it rainsâ€, because if they don’t pay, next planting season the water trapped in the dam would not be released to their rice fields.
Malinao failed to water its target service area by more than a thousand hectares because of insufficient water stored. But just the same, NIA planners and some local bureaucrats pushed for the construction of a reservoir dam that would supposedly catch the extra water from the Malinao dam for more than 5,000 hectares of rice lands. This is now the unfinished yet already famous Bayongan dam (Bohol Irrigation Project Phase II). The most expensive dam as to per hectare cost.
The P165 million Talibon small reservoir impounding project remained to be unfinished and unused even though it already had exhausted its budget and what is worse, someone is yet to answer to the anomaly. With Malinao and Capayas, NIA are being besieged by the demand of the farmer-beneficiaries to lower its irrigation service fee and improved its water services.
In the name of the farmers, BAYAN demands that with the failure of the land leveling project, concerned farmers should be given due compensation as to the damage done to their land because of overestimation of the capacity of the Malinao dam. Their memorandum of agreement should be voided since in the first place the other party, NIA, failed to deliver their responsibility. NIA and other involved officials should be investigated and be made answerable to their culpability to the failure and anomalies of the project. Dam projects should be reviewed as to its practicality, effectiveness and cost-efficiency. These projects are damned too expensive economically and socially.
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Topic: Overpriced Bohol water irrigation system with over-estimated benefits (Read 1015 times)