Province of Davao Oriental—The provincial government of Davao Oriental is speeding up the completion of the P256 million Irrigation Project in Cateel.
Governor Corazon N. Malanyaon told the team from the Mindanao Rural Development Program, during their site visit in Cateel on Monday, August 18, that the province is doubling its efforts to have the big-ticket project substantially completed by the end of August and hopefully inaugurated by October.
MRDP Program Director, Lealyn Ramos explains that the agency’s impending transition to Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP) this year elicits the need to urge local government units to complete all rural infrastructure subprojects, covered under the program, by the end of the month.
The Provincial Engineer’s Office said that in order to fast track completion of the irrigation project, workers and engineers for the past two months have been working on shifts for the daily 24-hour operation.
The engineering team said this is necessary in order to compensate for the times that their operations were hampered due to several disasters that hit the province, which includes typhoon Pablo in December 2012 that washed out most of the completed diversion works. Earlier this year, another disaster—the LPA-Agaton hit the province, causing another heavy blow to the already recuperating project.
“The construction of the massive project was a matter of surmounting the odds,” said Governor Malanyaon. “It’s a test of our endurance, our patience and our determination,” she added.
To date, the three packages of the project are significantly making remarkable developments. Package one, which consists of diversion works is 91%complete. Package two, which is the canalization, is now at 92%, while package three for canal structures is 80% complete.
Funded by MRDP-World Bank and the Provincial Government, the Cateel Irrigation Project is touted to be the one of the biggest irrigation projects in Mindanao.
Set to irrigate additional 1,600 hectares of rice fields in Cateel, the irrigation system would tap the huge water reserve of Cateel River to channel its flow to the surrounding rice fields in eleven barangays.
Residents said that most of these wide plains are rain-fed areas and remains unirrigated for many years due to the lack of funding for an irrigation system.
Governor Malanyaon considers this project as a valuable investment to develop the rice production potentials of the province. “We see this irrigation system can help us achieve one hundred percent rice sufficiency level, which in turn can also contribute to the country’s food sufficiency,” she said.
She also stressed that this project would not only help local farmers as it would also aid in boosting opportunities for businesses and create more livelihoods.
TAKING RISKS
Stemming from the governor’s dream of stepping up the province’s food production while opening up more opportunities for local farmers, Governor Malanyaon, earlier in her term as governor, seized the opportunity presented by MRDP to avail the agency’s huge funds for infra projects.
“I was told that there are huge funds waiting to be tapped, however none had availed because of the 50% required equity,” she explained.
Taking the risk, Governor Malanyaon accepted the challenge only to learn, at the time when the proposal was about to be approved in 2011, that the Department of Agriculture will shoulder 80% of the 50% equity supposed to be shelled out by the local government unit.
“It was really a huge surprise for us learning we got the biggest slice of the MRDP budget and was only required a small counterpart,” she said. “Sometimes, God rewards those who take the risks,” she added. By KLD
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