By Manny Piñol
Presidential prospect and Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte visits the farming town of M’lang in North Cotabato on Aug. 3 to continue his “Listening Tour” started early this year.
M’lang Mayor Joselito Piñol said Duterte’s visit to the agricultural town which grows rice, pomelo, bananas, oil palm and rubber, is a major achievement in the advocacy of the town’s leaders to expose the country’s future President to the problems confronting the agriculture sector.
Duterte, who has been Mayor of the agricultural city of Davao, has consistently declared that the next President of the country must ensure “Affordable and Available Food” for Filipinos.
He has emphasised that a leader’s most important mission is to feed his people and that this could only be done if government focuses on programs and projects which would contribute to the productivity of the Filipino farmer.
In a recent trip to Antique Province, Duterte told farmers in Sibalom town that government must provide rice farmers with free irrigation services to realise the country’s vision to make the Philippines rich sufficient.
“We are the only country where the rice farmers are the ones subsidizing the operation of a national irrigation agency, including the payment of the salaries of its workers and officials,’ Duterte said referring to the collection of irrigation fees from rice farmers 60% of which goes to the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).
Duterte also emphasized that government should facilitate the marketing of agricultural and fishery products, especially in an archipelagic country like the Philippines where the transport of farmers’ produce is hampered by the lack of infrastructure facilities.
“After assisting farmers in the production aspect, government must facilitate the movement and marketing of the products,” he said.
Mayor Piñol, now in the last year of his 9-year-term as leader of the Christian-Muslim-IP community located in the periphery of the vast Liguasan Marsh, said Mayor Duterte will be welcomed not only by the people of the town but also of the whole province who are asking him to run for President in 2016.
“This will be a big moment for us, especially our farmers because they know that Mayor Duterte understands their problems,” Mayor Piñol said.
Mayor Piñol also said he will take up with the prospective Presidential candidate the mothballed M’lang Airport Project which has not been operationalised even when the runway and the terminal building have been completed.
(Photo credits: Mayor Duterte, oil palm nursery and M’lang Airport photos downloaded from google.com)
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