Irrigation associations restructuring into public agencies pushed for third reading, strong confrontation between both sides, Council of Agriculture: expand service to 370,000 hectares outside irrigation districts
The bill to turn the Irrigation Associations into public agencies will go to the Legislative Yuan on the 16th to be pushed through its third reading, but the attitudes of industry, government, and academia are poles apart. Former Council of Agriculture (COA) Minister Li Chin-lung, National Taiwan University Department of Agricultural Economics professor Wu Rong-jie, and others today submitted a consent form signed by more than one hundred people in academia, strongly backing the reform; however, former COA Minister Chen Bao-ji, together with the deans of five NTU College of Agriculture colleges, former Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan, and more than forty other agricultural and water resources experts, also submitted a "petition to postpone the restructuring."
If the Legislative Yuan succeeds in pushing it through, after the Irrigation Associations are upgraded to public agencies, will they truly be able to extend services to 370,000 hectares of "outside irrigation district" farmland? Will implementing the associations' works with public authority effectively raise service quality and efficiency? If the "Irrigation Associations" are restructured into branch offices under the central third-level agency "Rural and Farmland Water Resources Administration," will they be able to fight for farmers' water rights according to the principle that "agricultural water use comes before industrial water use"? These points of contention have sparked heated discussion in academia.
COA promise: The NT$76.5 billion in Irrigation Association assets and land assets will absolutely be used for irrigation and farmland water resources
"I know this (the Irrigation Associations) should have been changed long ago, but it takes guts." Wu Rong-jie said that although five current deans of the NTU College of Agriculture and many water resources experts cast votes to "postpone the restructuring," over the past few days most voices around him have been in support of the reform; Chen Ji-zhong also said that the reform bill has now won the support of 94 agricultural scholars and 57 scholars from other fields, "including at least two former ministers, three former university presidents, and at least more than ten current and former deans."
Although the COA pointed out that the number of people "supporting the reform" is in the majority, and at today's press conference displayed the "national Irrigation Associations' petition supporting the restructuring of the Irrigation Associations" and the "national academia petition supporting the restructuring of the Irrigation Associations," in the face of tomorrow being the critical third reading of the restructuring bill, and with members of 14 irrigation associations including Beiji, Taoyuan, and Yunlin, along with farmer representatives, vowing to protest at the Legislative Yuan, Li Chin-lung said that since there are so many voices from outside, the future use of assets should be arranged more appropriately, "to give farmers an explanation."
In response, Wu Rong-jie said that according to his understanding, the current government already has some supporting ideas, "such as using the Irrigation Associations' assets as a fund, and establishing a foundation to manage the fund, in order to improve irrigation and water resources." Wu believes this will be more open and transparent, and more efficient.
In response, Chen Ji-zhong promised that "the existing NT$76.5 billion in Irrigation Association assets and land assets will absolutely be used for irrigation and farmland water resources," that the goal will not change, that he will seek out local irrigation association presidents for further communication, and that he looks forward to the smooth passage of the restructuring bill tomorrow.