Department of Agriculture-Regional Field Office I headed by Dir. Lucrecio R. Alviar, Jr. met with the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) officials led by NIA Manager Angelito Miguel to firm up their commitments of providing timely irrigation for rice areas to be planted this coming wet cropping season.

Held at the DA-RFO I Conference Room on April 17, 2020, the meeting provided updates on the number of hectares to be irrigated through the 28 national irrigation systems and the 329 communal irrigations systems in the region.

With the 311,045 hectares targeted area planted for rice this wet cropping season in the region, NIA could only irrigate 47,899 hectares from its assisted irrigation systems while 48,397 from the communal irrigation systems regionwide. Nonetheless, “once the major rehabilitation for the irrigation systems be completed in the 6th district of Pangasinan located in Natividad and Asingan, a 10,000 hectares additional area will soon be irrigated,” Manager Miguel said.

Considering the timely irrigation services by NIA, DA-RFO I through the Rice Banner Program has already scheduled the delivery of 58,182 bags of rice seeds for distribution to the municipalities with irrigated areas.

As early as the first week of May, DA shall be distributing seeds as suppliers are expected to deliver the seeds at designated drop off points or warehouses of the DA by April 27-30 and May 2-5, 2020.

Aside from the irrigation concern, the meeting also provided an avenue to discuss accreditation of the NIA’s contractors and employees through the issuance of Inter-Agency Task Force ID to continue the rehabilitation operations and activities being made to irrigation canals and other critical projects by the agency regionwide.

For this purpose, DA-RFO I through the Management Information System (MIS) Section provided the NIA the standard lay out of the IATF ID for the reproduction of the same to ensure an unhampered travel of their employees in going to and from the rehabilitation project sites.