Bago City, Negros Occidental (Sept. 28 – Late Post) – Three years after it was inaugurated by no less than then President Benigno Aquino III, the P40-M Bago City Rice Processing Complex came to life Sept. 28 in time for the visit of the Agriculture Secretary under President Rodrigo Duterte.
The operation of the mothballed modern Japanese-made rice processing complex came after I publicly warned that the Agriculture Department will take over the facility if the Provincial Government of Negros Occidental (PGNO) fails to make it run.
The rice processing complex is a joint project of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) and (PGNO).
The DAF funded the project built in a PGNO land to serve some 7,000-hectares of rice farms in Bago City.
After a much-publicized inauguration with Pres. Aquino, everybody forgot about the rice complex.
Credit is given to the new provincial agriculturist Japhet Masculino, a distant relative who comes from my hometown in M’lang, Cotabato, who I instructed to look into the mothballed project.
Masculino, a lawyer by profession but a farmer by birth and passion, immediately worked on my instructions.
Visiting the rice complex, I saw signs that it was operated in time for my visit because I saw cobwebs in the newly milled rice which was bagged.
The two big rice driers and another 10-ton mobile rice drier acquired using the Yolanda rehabilitation funds were also idle.
In the presence of Gov. Alfredo Marañon, I asked Masculino to make sure the driers are commissioned in two weeks or the DAF will take them back.
The Bago City Rice Processing Complex is not the only DAF-funded facility which was built without the needed planning and social preparation.
In La Trinidad, Benguet, the DAF constructed a vegetable trading facility worth P800-M which remained inoperational until President Duterte assumed office.
Vegetable farmers in the Cordillera refused to bring their products to the Benguet Agr-Pinoy Trading Center because they were not involved in the planning.
Today, the BAPTC is operated.by a board where vegetable farmers are represented and an estimated 400 to 500-metric tons of vegetables are traded everyday.
Sadly, there are many more government funded agricultural facilities built without necessary planning and social preparation.
They stand in the middle of nowhere rotting and serving as monuments to government’s indiscriminate wastage of people’s money.
Under Pres. Duterte, this will never happen again.
We make sure we deliver what the farmers and fisher folks need by directly interacting with them through the nation-wide Biyaheng Bukid.
The trips may be rigorous but the results respond to what the farmers and fisher folks need.
(Photos by Larry Nuestro, DA-AFID)
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