NIA chief to investigate gov’t agency’s anomalies

By Peter Balocnit

TABUK CITY -- National Irrigation Administration Administrator Florencio Padernal said he will to do everything for farmers and rid NIA of anomalies and start probes of such.

Padernal was guest speaker during 20th Kalinga Day and Ullalim Festival here last week.

He told farmers who are  members of irrigators associations that he will work  with Presidential Assistant for Food Security and Agricultural Modernization  Francis Pangilinan to  attain NIA’s objective of increasing farmers’ income and making rice farming three cropping in a year.

Upon assumption to office, he increased the budget of NIA-Kalinga to P137 million for 2015.  “I also proposed further increase to P200M in 2016,” Padernal said, adding NIA will focus on the  construction and rehabilitation of Communal Irrigation Systems.

According to the administrator, the completion of the total rehabilitation of the Upper Chico River Irrigation System by December this year will pave focus to CIS in the Kalinga.

“I will talk with the contractor to hasten the project’s implementation and I comeback in December to see the completion of the P420 million total rehab of UCRIS,” Padernal said.

On the request of farmers for a training center in Kalinga, Padernal said “We will fund it and construct this year.”

He said in order to hear straight from farmers their concern, Padernal  put the chairman of the IAs national federation as member of the NIA board.

He urged farmers to have a direct link with his office so he could respond quickly on their complaints.