(Eagle News) – President Rodrigo Duterte recently assigned Agriculture Secretary William Dar as Cabinet Officer for Regional Development and Security (CORDS) in Cordillera Administrative Administration (CAR).
Dar said the new post will require him to visit provinces in the Cordillera region regularly.
“Given this recent post, I will be regularly coming here not only in Benguet but other provinces of Cordillera to address concerns and issues in the area and make reports to the President,” he said.
Dar is the latest addition among the Cabinet secretaries assigned as CORDS.
Under this initiative, Cabinet members are assigned to discharge their functions, duties and responsibilities to a particular region in addition to their regular duties, a Department of Agriculture release said.
Dar vowed to help improve the state of agriculre in the Cordillera region.
“Kaya asahan po ninyo na tayo ay magtutulungan para mapaunlad natin ang industriya ng agrikultura at the same time ma-sustain natin ang natural ecosystem dito sa Cordillera,” he said.
As cabinet officer for CORDS, Dar will help in ensuring speedy, efficient and orderly resolution of problems in government operations in the region.
He will also assist the President in delivering basic services and livelihood to their assigned region.
Dar received his doctoral degree from the University of the Philippines at Los Banos.
After serving in the faculty of the Benguet State University in the northern Philippines, he became the first director of the Philippine Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) in 1988.
During this time, Philippines started to invest much in building a national system of advanced agricultural research institutes, such as the Philippine Rice Research Institute, PhilRice.
Dar was also designated as the executive director of the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic, and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD) and served on the governing boards of international research bodies such as the International Rice Research Institue (IRRI) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (known by its Spanish acronym CIMMYT for Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo CIMMYT) and at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics or ICRISAT.
He also served briefly as Acting Secretary of Agriculture and as Presidential Adviser on Rural Development during the Presidency of Joseph Estrada. He was selected as Director General of ICRISAT in the year 1999. He has continued ever since in that position. He has written the book “Feeding the forgotten poor”. Dar was conferred with MS Swaminathan Award for leadership in agriculture on 24 June 2013.
He was appointed on August 5, 2019 to head the Department of Agriculture replacing former agriculture chief Emmanuel “Manny” Pinol.