/ AFP / Ted Aljibe/
(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte has signed into law the Free Irrigation Service Act, which exempts farmers who own 8 hectares of land or less from paying irrigation fees, and allows for the writing off of their loans and penalties to the National Irrigation Administration.
Under the act signed into law on Feb. 2, the farmers are covered by the exemption if the water in question is derived from “national irrigation systems and communal irrigation systems that were or are to be funded, constructed, maintained and administered by the (NIA) and other government agencies, including those that have been turned over to irrigators associations.”
According to the law, all “unpaid ISF and the corresponding penalties of farmers with eight hectares and below to NIA, and all loans, past due accounts and the corresponding interests and penalties of IAs to NIA” are “condoned and written off from the books of NIA.”
Farmers with “more than eight hectares of land, corporate farms and plantations drawing water for agricultural crop production, and fishponds and other persons, natural or juridical, drawing water for non-agricultural purposes from NIS and CIS or using the irrigation systems as drainage facilities” shall, however, “continue to be subject to the payment of ISF,” the law said.
The implementing rules and regulations of the act shall be promulgated by the NIA in consultation with other stakeholders within three months from the start of effectivity of the law after 15 days from its publication in the Official Gazette or in two newspapers of general circulation.
In the 2016 elections, Duterte promised farmers he would do away with irrigation fees.