San Roque dam project to continue

SAN CARLOS CITY — President Arroyo rejected mounting clamor to stop the construction of the $1.2-billion San Roque multipurpose dam.

"It is very difficult to stop that project (now)," said Mrs. Arroyo during a multisectoral dialogue here last Saturday.

She told oppositors to the project, among them members of the farmers’ group Tignayan Dagiti Mannalon Mangwaya-waya, that the project "is already there, but we will probably not have any other large-scale irrigation project in this administration."

"We will be moving to having communal irrigation systems from now on," she added.

Although the dam project will proceed, the President gave assurance "that security of lives and the rights of the indigenous people and the sustainability of our environment are not sacrificed amid the infrastructure development."

She added that families displaced by the dam project will be resettled and compensated.

The President told the crowd that she has instructed National Power Corp. president Jesus Alcordo to meet with the affected tribal communities on April 30 to discuss their problems.

The San Roque multipurpose dam, which will one of Asia’s biggest, is designed to generate 345 megawatts of electricity, control floods and irrigate 87,000 hectares of farmland.

It is being built in the boundary of Itogon, Benguet and San Manuel and San Nicolas towns in Pangasinan.

The project, funded by Japan’s Export-Import Bank, was started in 1996 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2002. — Eva de Leon, Cesar Ramirez