Basey appealing to Pres. Arroyo to finish irrigation project sourced at Bugasan

By CHITO D. DELA TORRE
April 21, 2008

Samar Vice-Governor Jesus B. Redaja’s farm tractor with a 12-horsepower generator is the newest boon to rice and tikog farmers in Old San Agustin (Bariwon) of Basey, Samar.  Punong barangay Calixtro Ocier is very happy about this latest assistance from the good and helpful vice-governor.  The farm machines were delivered last week, temporarily kept at the ground floor of the barangay hall of Palaypay which is just next to the elementary school of Palaypay in Basey.  Former councilor Anie Ogrimen attended to the men whom JBR requested to deliver the tractor and engine from Catbalogan City to Basey.  Teodorico D. Porbus, president of Baktas Kabub’wason Rural Workers Association, Baktas member Myron and myself later on took pictures of the machines.

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Mayor Wilfredo O. Estorninos of Basey is strongly supporting the proposal to create a new province from out of the existing province of Samar because he is convinced that the move will mean a lot of improvements that will be fast in coming, for the benefit of, first, those who will be part of the new province that will be called Northwestern Samar, and second, those from the remaining 16 towns that have since been known already as the Second Congressional District.

That is why, when Vice-Gov. Redaja sent him a letter of invitation to attend the follow-up hearing by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan on the same proposal, mayor Estorninos did not hesitate to join the other mayors in attending the SP session on the matter which served as the main agendum for the provincial board’s session scheduled for April 17 at the Capitol’s SP session hall in Catbalogan City.

Estorninos has earlier received expressions of support from many Basaynon who had long ago been yearning for a new province so that the provincial government of the new province could closely attend to the basic needs of the constituents in its component towns and the old province could do the same.

As it is today, the provincial government of Samar has its hands full that it cannot introduce much-needed improvements, specifically cemented roads that will replace constantly deteriorating roads leading to interior barrios and linking top producing barrios to the poblacion and interconnecting those that promise to work together harder to achieve a common goal.

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The Basey River Irrigation Project that will tap the enormous water supply at Bugasan River north of the interior barrio of Mabini is already 17 years behind its original schedule of completion.  Mayor Estorninos shares the sentiment of Basey rice farmers that unless the national government siphons down all the money that the project needs, the Government of the Philippines will one day wake up to find the project a ghost for nothing.  The project was originally conceived to irrigate up to 3,000 hectares, from Mabini to San Antonio or more than 15 rice-producing barrios, and was seen to fulfill a dream of making Basey a rice granary.  Today, when the country needs more rice, the need to complete the irrigation project in Basey is felt most relevant, pressing and in order.  President Gloria Arroyo is perhaps not properly informed by all executives who have something to do with the irrigation of Basey.  Engr. Oscar Salamida, provincial irrigation officer for Samar to whose competence the Basaynon immediately hitched their wagon of hope upon his own hopeful acceptance of taking the reins of the National Irrigation Administration in the province, has been doing his level best to access the funds from the national government, but his efforts could not shake the giants up there.

Some intellectuals in Basey are entertaining the fear that unless the project is completed within the next few months, that failure will once again be exploited by the New People’s Army as a very valid cause to draw in to its side the hopeless rice farmers.  When that happens, that will again mean another hundreds of millions of pesos spent unnecessarily just to quash insurgency that is already about to be eradicated in Basey.