Councilor finds machines donated to Ormoc farmers not used productively

ORMOC CITY — Councilor Tomas Serafica recently instructed the City Agriculture and Services Office (CASO) to run an inventory on the farm implements donated to farmers’ organizations if those are being utilized properly. He made the directive after learning that some of the equipment given are lying idle.

Serafica, who chairs the committee on agriculture and fisheries, noted that Ormoc farmers benefited from an outpouring of donations from the Department of Agriculture (DA) and non-government organizations after super-typhoon Yolanda in November 2013.

However, some of the farm machineries worth hundreds of thousands are left to rot. The matter came to Serafica’s attention after learning that Cabingtan Livelihood Community Association (Calcoa) is a recipient of a compact corn mill worth 1350,000 from DA’s corn-cassava project.

This piqued Serafica, knowing that a corn sheller worth about 1120,000 was previously assigned to Calcoa which is not being utilized due to an engine defect. DA donated said corn sheller to the local government unit (LGU) which, in turn, assigned it to the farmers’ organization.

Serafica surmised that Calcoa may have thought the responsibility of repairing the corn sheller lies on the LGU being the owner. But he believes the organization should have taken the initiative to have the machine repaired since its members will benefit from its usage.

Serafica told CASO to pull out the corn sheller from Calcoa so this can be given to another farmers’ organization that is more in need of the machine and the same be done to other unutilized farm equipment. “The problem (with Calcoa) is that they accept donations even if they’re not interested,” he said.

Serafica further directed CASO to include in the guidelines on assigning farm implements a condition that farmer beneficiaries will bear the responsibility of repairing the donated machineries and that this condition should be made clear during the orientation.