Alibis and actualities at irrigation agency

The Philippine Medical Association is likely to follow the stand of its American counterpart that obesity is a disease. This is because obesity stems from physiochemical disorders or malfunctions. Also, so people will take seriously the killer ailments that obesity causes: heart attack, diabetes, and certain cancers. Obesity incidence used to be 1.3 in every ten Filipinos, but doubled to three in ten in only five years, indicating worsening lifestyles and unhealthy intakes.

Pharmaceutical companies are preparing for the PMA declaration with special products against obesity and the connected ills. As well, for the less serious but equally troubling ones, like difficulty of breathing, digestion, walking, and sleep; weakening of sight, teeth, liver, kidneys, and pancreas; back pains; allergies; swelling of extremities.

But insurers will be thrown in a tizzy. The state-run PhilHealth, for one, will have to expand its treatment coverage, including surgery and counseling, for obesity and linked diseases. Funding will be a poser. Solutions might be found in added taxes on soft drinks and fast foods that have high sugar content, like they did in South America. Food and beverage processors in turn would have to reformulate their products or close shop. Even airlines might copy the Samoan Air tack of offering a special “XL class” for supersized passengers.

The end result should be a healthier population.

*      *      *

Welcome, Rolls Royce, the world’s most prestigious carmaker, to the Gates of Hell, Manila. People are wondering how the limos will navigate through road ruts, traffic, floods, garbage, and druggies wiping windshields with rags for loose change.

*      *      *

What were those blokes at the National Irrigation Administration thinking? In pre-event publicity, they had hyped their 50th anniversary last Tuesday with a special awarding by President Noynoy Aquino of 20 past administrators. Newsmen wondered what for. Scanning the roster, I recalled exposing in Gotcha at least two of the awardees for multimillion-peso overpriced purchases. Two more are facing Ombudsman probes. Could the conferment be a ruse for exoneration?

So it came as a frightful surprise for the NIA boys (pleasant for critics) that Aquino dispensed with the praises. Arriving scowling at the bash, he at once berated them for missing their irrigation targets year after year. There was no reason to revel, he said, implying that unlike last week on the public works department’s 115th year, they deserved no “milestone occasion bonus.” Failure to irrigate hundreds of thousands of mostly rice lands accounts for lingering rural poverty.

Dismal is a mild term for the NIA’s record. In 2001-2009 it met only 66 percent of watering goals. Worst were in 2005, only 56 percent, 10,539 hectares covered of the 18,883 target, or 8,344 short; and 2006, 40 percent, only 8,989 hectares irrigated of the 22,639 target, or 13,650 under.

Targets rose under the Aquino administration. Work pace picked up under the present NIA chief (in acting capacity Sept. 2010-July 2012, permanent since then till month’s end). Still Aquino was unsatisfied. In 2011 the accomplishment rate was only 87 percent, or 32,824 hectares irrigated of the 37,759 goal; in 2012, 65 percent, 52,372 hectares of the 81,170 aim.

“Suspicious,” Aquino noted, never has the NIA hit target. He will be watching them more closely. The NIA head supposedly reasoned out that the shortfalls were due to Typhoon Pablo that ravaged Mindanao. But the presidential spokesman dismissed it as one of the alibis that have been irking Aquino. Disaster struck only Compostela Valley, Davao, and Surigao, in Dec. 2012 or late in the exampled period at that. And floods would not have been as destructive precisely had the irrigation canals, which double a floodways, been completed on time. Indeed a special audit must be made of NIA self-granted perks. The Commission on Audit would unearth lavish spending amidst the idling.

Particularly upsetting for Aquino was the case of Balog-Balog Dam in his Tarlac home-province, where he was once congressman. Thought up during his mom Cory’s Presidency, approved under Estrada’s, and set for startup during Arroyo’s, it awaits groundbreaking three years into his term. It is supposed to irrigate 39,150 hectares in eight towns ravaged by the 1990 Luzon earthquake and 1991 Pinatubo eruption. “What would I tell my cabalen (province-mates) at the end of my term,” Aquino moaned?

Balog-Balog was a bad example for Aquino, but perhaps a good excuse for the NIA head, to use. For it was the National Economic and Development Authority, which the President no less chairs, that decided in mid-2012 to defer the dam’s construction. Aquino himself disclosed so on Oct. 15, 2012, during a project inaugural at Moncada, Tarlac. There were questions about redesign, he said then. The Philippine Information Agency reported so in its website (see http://www.pia.gov.ph/news/index.php?article=561350205068).

The PIA report quoted Aquino in part: “The design of the dam is being finalized. Do we build one high dam or several smaller dams so that the flow of water would have several purposes, because we are also looking at a possible hydroelectric component? But for me, the primary concerns are its irrigation and flood control components.”

From what I gathered, local politicians, including presidential kin, rightly had wished to maximize the use of meager funds. It’s unclear what the NEDA has decided since then.

*      *      *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m. DWIZ, (882-AM).

E-mail: [email protected]

Gotcha archives on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459