DA reviews ‘bloated’ report on El Niño damage
The Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) of the Department of Agriculture (DA) is validating the reports on damages on rice and other crops in the region as human error is seen in reporting the actual damage caused by El Niño phenomenon.
Initially, the province of Antique has properly reported and accounted the actual damage from among the provinces in the region.
DA Regional Executive Director Larry Nacionales said the validation is being conducted by a team from BAS to check the actual damage caused by the dry spell from the figures submitted by municipal agriculturists. He believes there is a “human error” resulting to inconsistent figures.
At the moment, the damages brought by the long dry spell does not warrant the declaration of the region under the state of calamity, said Nacionales.
BAS is an attached agency of the agriculture department. It is headed by Ireneo Olivares.
The Task Force El Niño reported that the dry spell has affected 29,177 farmer-families in Western Visayas. It has affected 32,300.76 hectares of rice lands, in which 11,031 are totally affected and 21,268.84 hectares are partially affected. The total value of rice that was affected by the drought was initially placed at P635.5 million.
Nacionales did not categorically say whether there are local government units which intentionally bloated the figures on the damages in order to get assistance from the DA, Department of Social Welfare and Development and Department of Labor and Employment.
Nacionales lamented that there are reports on damages and number of affected farmer-families which are far from different from the actual damages and exact number of affected farmers. It seems they have included the entire population. It is important to have all the reports verified, he said.
The team validating the report on damages has their way of checking the report since they are conducting it on a weekly basis. They could not just easily say they planted much this week when it was not reported last month, said Nacionales.
In Western Visayas, 45,000 hectares of farm lands are vulnerable to the effects of the dry spell. Only 32,300.76 hectares of planted crops have been affected and 11,031.92 hectares are totally damaged. The remaining 21,268.84 are partially damaged but have the chance to recover, said Nacionales.
Nacionales said the validating team is currently checking the damages in the province of Iloilo. He could not say yet whether the provincial government’s report on damages matches with the number of affected rice lands.
The Iloilo provincial government reported that there are 31,000 hectares of rice lands affected by the long dry spell. The damage reached to almost P1 billion. Gov. Niel Tupas wants the Sangguniang Panlalawigan to declare the province under the state of calamity because of the damages caused by the dry spell in agricultural sector.
The validated report of the agricultural statistics is used as basis of the labor department as well as the social welfare department in extending assistance to the affected farmer-families, said Nacionales.
