TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Water from the Chico River will soon flow into some 8,700 hectares in the towns of Pinukpuk in Kalinga and Tuao and Piat in Cagayan allowing the owners of the lands to plant rice at least twice a year.
The development is expected to dramatically improve the economic situation of the 4,350 affected households because currently, their land are either irrigated by water pumps, are rainfed or untilled.
This developed as the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) will start the implementation of the P4.37B Chico River Pump Irrigation Project (CRPIP) next month with the completion set in June 2021.
As designed, 7,150 hectares of the service area is in Tuao, 380 hectares in Piat and 1,170 hectares in Pinukpuk.
There, however, is a possibility that the service area in the Kalinga side will be expanded.
Engr. Patrick Resurreccion, acting chief of Kalinga NIA, informed that the NIA central has instructed the conduct of joint survey among NIA in both regions along with the engineering offices of Kalinga and Cagayan to determine if the elevation will allow the expansion.
He said that it will be known in the next three months if the irrigation system could reach the lower parts of Pinukpuk and barangays Kinama and San Francisco in Rizal.
The move of the NIA was in response to the request expressed by both Congressman Allen Jesse Mangaoang and Governor Jocel Baac during the ceremonial groundbreaking on June 8 in Pinucoc, Pinukpuk that the NIA widen the coverage area in Kalinga to at least 3,000 hectares.
Resurreccion said that even if the expansion will not be feasible, the additional irrigated riceland as per design would still be a great help to the province and the region considering the continuing conversion of prime agricultural land into commercial and residential uses in Tabuk, the rice granary of the Cordillera.
Second major Chico irrigation system
The first major irrigation facility along the river is the Upper Chico River Irrigation System (UCRIS) which was constructed through a loan from the World Bank in 1983.
The advent of system which serves 6,000 hectare in the Tabuk and Pinukpuk and 4,000 hectares in the town Quezon, Isabela spelled the economic progress of the coverage area specially Tabuk and Quezon because previously, the farmers relied on the rain and could plant only once a year with a significant portion of the arable land still untilled at that time.
Landowner Eusebio Orprecio recalls that before the UCRIS, the maximum harvest per hectare in the Tabuk Valley was 60 cavans compared to todays 80 to 160 cavans.
On the other hand, NIA projects that the farmer beneficiaries inclusive of high value third crops could increase their income per hectare per year by P75,193.00 with the CRPIP.
According to the NIA, apart from the blessings of continuous and adequate irrigation, the CRPIP will generate hundreds of employment opportunities for locals.
CPA concerns
In a statement dated April 13, 2018, the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) pictured the project as the “latest move of the Duterte regime in its sell-out of our natural resources and ancestral lands to foreign investors, without consent from affected communities” adding that because of the involvement of foreign investors in the implementation, the “project will result in the privatization of agricultural services and will force us to succumb to unfair conditions set by these corporations in exchange to access to our very own resources.”
The organization would later warn that the project will lead to the submersion of tribal lands, the displacement of thousands of people and might even provoke animosity towards the government.
When this reporter relayed to the CPA-Kalinga Chapter the information from Resurreccion that the system will lift water by means of pumps, Chair Juan Dammay was unconvinced.
Pointing out that there are no deep sections of the Chico River in the project area the river terrain being almost flat in the stretch, Dammay said that he is certain the CRPIP will have a dam component.
He reasoned that in order to pump water with a six-inch diameter pipe, one needs pooled water so how much more when one pumps the water needed by an irrigation system of the magnitude of the CRPIP.
He said that in the event that the CRPIP will build a dam, the dire effects the organization has warned about will take place because even now that there is no dam in the area, low lying places along the Chico River in Pinukpuk and Tabuk City experience massive flooding.
Citing CPA members in Pinukpuk, Dammay alleged that there was no way the people in the area could know the design of the project because there were no real consultations regarding the project conducted and that the design was never presented to the affected communities.
CPA-Kalinga member Delfin Pecua, Jr. said that apart from the design, the content of the memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the Chinese government and the Philippines on the loan to fund the project has not also been disclosed by the government.
He said that the government should be transparent with the MOA as there might be terms and conditions that will put Filipinos at a disadvantage later.
P3.69 B or 85 percent of the project cost is funded through a loan from the Chinese government with an interest of two percent a year, maturing in 20 years inclusive of a seven-year grace period.
Asked for reaction on the comment that as shown by its position on the CRPIP, the CPA does not want the poor people to progress, Dammay said that these are just intrigues intended to destroy the organization because of its strong advocacy against projects that are not only destructive but only benefit the investors but not the people.
“Let’s ask the small people who know what the CPA stands for. We are also branded as terrorists but it is the people who will judge us,” Dammay said.
“We are not against development but we only ask for whom is the development. We will not relent because that has been our position ever since the struggle against the Chico Dams and the Cellophill,” Pecua said.
The CPA was founded in 1984 by participants in the successful opposition against the World Bank-funded Chico dams project and the commercial logging operations of the Cellophil Resources Corporation in Abra during Martial Law.
Side of NCIP
Napoleon Ayang-ang who was then the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) Community Development Officer in charge of Pinukpuk, belied the allegation of the CPA that the project does not have the consent of the concerned residents saying that the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process for the project was undertaken with the Magaogao and Pinukpuk indigenous cultural communities (ICCs).
He said that the activity was held jointly with NCIP Region 2 and the LGU of Pinukpuk with the FPICs of the two ICCs granted in January of this year.
“The consultations were open to all interested people but the CPA did not come. We hang tarpaulins announcing the consultations in conspicuous areas one week before they were held. We also sent notices to the stakeholders. I do not see any reason why they did not attend,” Ayang-ang said.**Estanislao Albano, Jr.