A TOP-level meeting on mitigating the effects of the El Niño phenomenon was held last Monday at the Office of Civil Defense in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City amid government preparations in addressing the expected long dry season this year which, according to PAGASA, may last until next year.
Department of National Defense (DND) acting chief and National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) chair Carlito Galvez Jr. presided over the meeting.
Those in attendance included National Irrigation Administration (NIA) officer-in-charge Eddie Guillen and deputy administrator for engineering and operations C’zar M. Sulaik, Department of Migrant Workers Secretary Maria Susana Ople, Civil Defense administrator and NDRRMC Executive Director Usec Ariel Nepomuceno, and other members of NDRRMC.
The NIA reported that for the dry cropping season which started last November, a total of 1,250,078 hectares have been irrigated, exceeding the programmed area of 1,212,888 hectares by 3.07 percent.
Out of the irrigated area, 1,240,234 hectares have already been planted and successfully harvested 757,163 hectares. There are 9,842 hectares remaining under land soaking/preparation. However, 315 hectares could not proceed to the planting stage due to damaged irrigation facilities caused by several typhoons that occurred last year, the NIA said.
As NIA moves into the Wet Season, which started this April 2023 in some areas of the Mindanao Regions, currently, 24,672.78 hectares are under land soaking and preparation stage. NIA is optimistic that it will surpass previous achievements in irrigating more hectares of land in the upcoming season.
Projected Programmed Area for 2024 dry crop was 1,212,417 for both National Irrigation Systems (NISs) and Communal Irrigation Systems (CISs). Water delivery will have an early start of August 25, 2023 and a later start of April 14, 2024.