FARMERS in Negros Island Region (NIR) have stopped paying irrigation service fees (ISF) amid the absence of the law repealing the collection, an official of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).
NIA Regional Director Mario Sande said the mandate of the agency to collect back accounts has yet to be passed, which is expected most probably within the year.
Under the approved guidelines for free irrigation program, the agency still has to collect unpaid service fees.
Sande, however, said that since the program implementation started in January this year, farmer-members of various irrigators associations (IAs) in the region are no longer paying their back accounts.
NIA-NIR records showed that currently about P230 million in unpaid service fees are accounted for farmers in the region. The figure is part of at least P13 billion back accounts nationwide.
“There have been proposals in Congress to condone back accounts which possibly discouraged farmers in the country, including Negros, to pay,” he added.
NIA Administrator Ricardo Visaya, who was in Bacolod City earlier this month, said the agency is awaiting the results of the deliberation being conducted by the Senate on the coverage of “No Irrigation Service Fee” program.
Visaya said the irrigation agency is also waiting for the law providing them the guidelines on the coverage of those irrigators with back accounts.
Under the free irrigation program, P2.3-billion additional allocation in the budget of NIA has been allotted for the salaries of its workers previously sourced from the fees of farmers for irrigation services.
In Negros, farmer-members are currently availing the free irrigation program, including those with unpaid accounts.
Sande pointed out that IAs are still allowed to collect from their respective members for their operational expenses and not as payment for NIA.
“When the impending law repeals the service fee collection but will not condone back accounts, the Government Corporate Council will help especially in the legal aspect of going after those non-paying farmers,” Sande said.
Otherwise, the NIA subsidy will be included in the provisions of the 2018 General Appropriations Act, he added.
