NIA withdraws plan to abolish 71 provincial offices

CABANATUAN CITY — The board of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) has backtracked on its planned abolition of 71 provincial irrigation offices (PIOs) by withdrawing the rationalization plan it earlier submitted to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

In Resolution 7426-06, the NIA board agreed to withdraw the rationalization plan. Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, who chairs the board, the agency’s highest policy-making body, was furnished a copy of the resolution.

Antonio Reyes, president of the 9,000-strong NIA Employees’ Association of the Philippines, told The STAR that the withdrawal of the rationalization plan was a moral victory for their group, which had opposed it in an 11-page position paper submitted to President Arroyo.

In their position paper, the NIA employees sought NIA’s exemption from the implementation of Executive Order 366, which provides the guidelines for the government’s rationalization scheme.

The NIA employees said the PIOs will be effectively abolished under the Participatory Irrigation Development Project’s irrigation management transfer, one of whose components is the rationalization plan.

The PIDP, a World Bank-funded scheme, according to the employees’ group, will rationalize the NIA, abolish the PIOs, and merge vital departments and divisions in the NIA central office and regional offices.

"In short, the PIDP shall extremely scale down irrigation development, thus aggravating the worsening irrigation (situation)," they said.

NIA Administrator Arturo Lomibao, in a letter to Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr., said they were withdrawing the agency’s rationalization plan in line with the agriculture department’s request for another six months to totally review it.

Reyes said their group’s national council passed a resolution creating a panel to study, review and make recommendations on the NIA rationalization plan.

The panel is composed of Victorino Aron, Alejandro Culibar, Willie Ablan, and Reyes himself.

The council’s various officials — district presidents and sectoral representatives — approved the resolution.

Reyes said the panel would present its recommendations to the council for approval prior to its submission to the NIA management.

The withdrawal of the rationalization plan has prevented a possible mass layoff of NIA employees.