Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) – Farmers toil under the scorching heat of the sun almost all day. Yet they can barely survive and makes ends meet.
Rico Dagli has been a farmer for more than 20 years now. He’s been depending on carabaos to till his land. All this hard work would bring home P6,000 to his family each month.
Hundreds of farmers in Negros Oriental, like Dagli, have long been waiting for help from the government. And just this year, farm tractors from the Department of Agrarian Reform finally arrived.
Some are happy.
“Malaking tulong sa amin yung traktora na naibigay sa amin,” says Freddie Salgon, chairman of Hacienda Carmen. “Sa katotohanan, yung sugar cane na ngayon tinatanim namin naging productive.”
But others aren’t happy.
“Yung proposal nga po na 90 horsepower mas maganda sa amin,” says Dagli, chairman of Kasfarbico Coioperatives, “Eh pag dumating na ang traktora eh 129 horsepower. Eh hindi na siguro kami mamimili.”
Farmers say they were not forced to accept the tractors. But it appears they were barely left with a choice.
Local cooperatives in Negros Oriental say they requested 90-horsepower farm tractors, which would have been more suitable for their average sized farms.
But DAR bought 120-horsepower tractors instead. In buying the Italian-made tractors, commonly used for big farms, the government may have wasted P131 million in the Visayas region – P36 million in Negros Oriental alone.
Based on the bidding documents of the Department of Agriculture in 2013, a 90-horsepower tractor with tools cost about P2.2 million.
DAR purchased 120-horsepower tractors at P3.98 million each.
Farmers say the government could have saved P1.78 million per unit if they had bought tractors with less horsepower.
Negros Oriental Rep. Henry Pryde Teves, who is a farmer himself, claims that ill-suited tractors were puchased to favor a particular bidder – Equity Mahchineries.
The company has yet to give its comment.
Other suppliers, Teves says, were capable of supplying 120-horsepower tractors. But they just didn’t have any in stock because they were not very easy to sell because they use up a lot of fuel.
So there was only one supplier of these tractors.
DAR Undersecretary Perry Villanueva denies there was a favored bidder.
“We are aware that there are bidders who are not capable of complying with the requirements for turbo-charged and fuel-injected engines,” Villanueva says. “However, the purpose of procurement is not to accommodate everyone, so long as the bidding is competitive.”
He adds that the tractors were purchased based on the recommendations of the Sugar Regulatory Administration.
But the SRA Administrator Regina Martin, says it had two recommendations back then – the 90-horsepower for average-sized farms and 120-horsepower for bigger farms.
There’s also another problem.
The tools that DAR purchased are for 90-horsepower tractors – not for the high-powered 120-horsepowered ones. These included disk harrows.
“Not having the right tools would not let you have the right output in the operation,” Martin says. “With a heavy tractor, you’ll need also a heavy farm implement. If not, it will just fly.”
