By Emme Rose Santiagudo
AFTER being stalled for more than three decades, the P11.2-billion Jalaur River Multipurpose Project (JRMP) II in Calinog, Iloilo commenced its groundbreaking and capsule-laying ceremony on Wednesday. The dam, a flagship project of the National Irrigation Authority (NIA)-Visayas, is the first large-scale reservoir outside of Luzon.
Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon for his part said, “The project could very well help in improving agricultural production in Western Visayas and in the country in general considering that 40% of the labor force in the region is engaged in agriculture and fisheries.”
“From an impressive 17.9% growth in 2011, the agriculture sector had a negative growth rate of 1.8% in 2015 and further contracted by a negative 0.5% in 2016,” he also said.
The JRMP-II is seen to help the agricultural sector by irrigating 31,840 hectares in 22 municipalities and two cities in Iloilo, thereby improving the yield of farmlands to 5.2 metric tons per hectare and doubling rice production to nearly 300, 000 metric tons per year.
The project will also supply 86,400 cubic meters of potable water daily and generate 6.6 megawatts of hydro-electric power.
JRMP-II, which is one of NIA’s eight big ticket projects, is also expected to provide 17,000 jobs during its construction in the next three years.
JRMP II was first implemented in the 1960s after the Fourth Congress passed Republic Act 2651 which provides for the construction of JRMP in Iloilo.
The first phase was completed in the 1980s but its second phase was stalled due to lack of funding.
Mr. Drilon sought funding from the Korean government in 2011.
The Korean government through the Export Import Bank’s (EXIM) Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) extended a loan worth P8.9-billion to assist the funding of the project with a counterpart of P2.2 billion from the national government.
NIA Regional Manager and JRMP II Concurrent Project Manager, engineer Gerardo P. Corsiga, said, “There is no word to describe how happy we are with the conduct of today’s ceremony. The journey that we have been embarked and the time and effort that had been invested in this project is all for the contribution to the growth of Iloilo.”
Once the project is completed by September 2022, Mr. Drilon said the province of Iloilo will become a model of rural development.
“If we all unite and work together to attain these goals, we can all say that if we fulfilled our dreams of a better and progressive Iloilo, it is because we all did our share,” he said.
