|
The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) decried the proposed raw water use tax as nothing but a redundant and useless tax on the populace, especially farmers. According to Ka Willy Marbella, internal deputy secretary general of the group, “the raw water use tax is nothing new,and in fact the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) already collects charges for water permits and annual water charges on existing water extraction rates imposed by it except when it is purely for domestic purposes. This is contained on Article 83 of the Philippine Water Code,” “Also Section 39 of PD 198 allows water districts to adopt and levy a groundwater fee for any other entities that make use of groundwater in their service areas. Local government units also impose fees for water resource extraction. In particular, the Provincial Council of Laguna has introduced a charge for extracting ground or surface water. Other entities like the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) also collect fees,” added the peasant leader. “In some cases, there are multiple fees or charges on a specific water source by entities that have been given authority to impose fees for water abstraction. The collection is not coordinated and leads to overlapping charges,” said Marbella. As for his part Carl Anthony Ala, public information officer of KMP, “so the situation is that we are already paying for our use of raw water but the service is not worth it. Take the case of irrigation services, only 4% of the total 13,000,000 hectares of agricultural lands are irrigated in our country. Now the NWRB even has the gall to increase the burden being carried by farmers,” “Even if we reduce the total agricultural
land area to 10,000,000 hectares, only 5% of it will have irrigation. They
want us to pay more for very minimal ,almost non-existent service. They
should be ashamed of themselves,” ended Ala. # # #
KMP - 19 April 2005 |
|