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De Lima bats for Senate probe into delays in free irrigation law's IRR


Opposition Senator Leila  de Lima has called for a Senate inquiry into the delay in the issuance of the Implementing Rules and Regulations for the Free Irrigation Service Act that, among others, would accelerate the country’s rice production.

In Senate Resolution 853 she urges the appropriate Senate panel to find out what is keeping the Department of Agriculture and its attached agency, the National Irrigation Authority (NIA), from promulgating the IRR.

“The lack of IRR for the Free Irrigation Service Act has caused delays and unevenness in its implementation, with some regions voluntarily implementing it in spite of the absence of the IRR,” she said.

Without the IRR, she added, “The law susceptible to partisan politics as well as any and all manners of politicking by various interest groups and individuals."

After it lapsed into law last Jan. 19, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Republic Act 10969, also known as the Free Irrigation Service Act, exempting farmers with up to eight hectares of land from paying irrigation service fees for water from national and communal irrigation systems.

Once fully implemented, the Free Irrigation Service Act also condones all previously unpaid irrigation fees of farmers to NIA, benefitting approximately 98 percent of the total farmer population in the country —or about three million farmers.

The resolution cited Kilusan ng Magbubukid ng Pilipinas questioning the DA and NIA for exacting these irrigation fees from farmers pending the issuance of the IRR, which was supposed to be promulgated three months since the enactment of the law.

In Cordillera, some 14,366 farmers have had their loans condoned in spite of the absence of IRR.  Some P390 million in loans and unpaid fees of farmers from 1993 to 2017 were condoned as a result of the passage of the law, she said.

De Lima, who chairs the Senate committee on social justice, welfare and rural development, underscored the need to urgently determine the cause for delay, as well as the corresponding accountability for said delay, in the promulgation of the IRR.

“This can also cause confusion on the farmers’ end as they may lack the proper procedural knowledge to exact accountability from the State and its constitutive agencies for the benefits as provided for in the Act,” she said.

Citing Philippine Statistics Authority's record, she said that farmers have been consistently more impoverished than the average Filipino and are thus relegated to the margins of society as members of the poorest of the poor. —LBG, GMA News

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