Palace asked: Stop abolition of UPRIIS

CABANATUAN CITY — Top officials and rank-and-file employees of the National Irrigation Administration’s Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation System (UPRIIS), which operates the mammoth Pantabangan Dam, have urged President Arroyo to stop the plan to abolish their agency and merge it with the NIA-Central Luzon office.

The UPRIIS officials and employees have launched a signature campaign in the three Central Luzon provinces serviced by the Pantabangan Dam seeking to convince the President to stop the plan touted as part of the government’s rationalization program.

In a letter circulated Friday, a copy of which was obtained by The STAR, UPRIIS officials led by operations manager Antonio Nangel appealed to Mrs. Arroyo, Agriculture Secretary Domingo Panganiban and NIA Administrator Baltazar Usis to scrap the plan.

They claimed that it would displace UPRIIS employees and cause disservice to some 70,000 farmers serviced by Pantabangan Dam in Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Bulacan.

They said that sacrificing the UPRIIS, the NIA’s flagship system, is tantamount to sacrificing the agency’s potential source of income as well as technical irrigation service and agricultural development.

They described as "totally irrational" the merging of the UPRIIS districts with the NIA-Region 3 office since the latter only services 66,803 hectares compared to the former’s 102,532 hectares.

Nangel said UPRIIS’ coverage area could further expand by an additional 40,000 hectares involving 10,000 more farmers upon the completion of projects under the Casecnan multi-purpose irrigation and power project.

Nangel said the NIA’s top management purposely made the UPRIIS an independent entity since it handles such a complex irrigation system that provides multi-purpose services such as irrigation and power.

The Arroyo administration has been pursuing a "reengineering" program that would reduce the number of government employees through the streamlining of 18 government-owned and -controlled corporations, including the NIA, through an early retirement scheme.

Last year, the government reported savings of P5.2 billion from this program.

The NIA’s sub-change management team, led by Deputy Administrator Marcelino Tugaoen Jr., has been fine-tuning the agency’s own rationalization program.

Part of the plan is to abolish the UPRIIS head office based in this city and place the administrative supervision of the Pantabangan Dam and the reservoir division in Pantabangan town and the four irrigation districts under the NIA-Region 3 office.

Usis’ predecessor, Proceso Domingo, has opposed the downsizing of NIA’s regional irrigation offices from 15 to only six.

Built in 1974, 17 months ahead of schedule, the World-Bank funded Pantabangan Dam is considered a showcase of Filipino engineering and technical excellence.