VIGAN CITY — Deformed and rusty steel bars protruding from an elevated concrete platform give a structure at Barangay Tamag here the look of a demolished building.

Grass has grown in most parts of the rectangular platform located about a kilometer south of this city’s world famous heritage site.

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Steel poles that may have been used as scaffolding have been neatly arranged at the still incomplete Tobacco Farmers Convention Center.

Its construction began in 2008, a year after the provincial government bought the 1.3-hectare land, according to Bernard Vicente, president of the National Federation of Tobacco Farmers Associations and Cooperatives (Naftac).

Since then, work had not resumed after the government spent tens of millions of pesos from the provincial government’s share of tobacco excise taxes, Vicente said.

The tax share represented income from the province’s tobacco farmers.

Vicente said the provincial government might have already spent P585 million for the project, which, he noted, was not even 10-percent complete.

Top tobacco producer

Ilocos Sur province, the country’s top tobacco producer, receives more than half of northern Luzon’s share from excise on locally manufactured Virginia tobacco under Republic Act No. 7171.

The law promotes the development of farmers in Virginia tobacco-producing provinces.

In 2015, Ilocos Sur received P828.6 million as its share of the 2012 excise, adding to the P1.1-billion share distributed to 34 towns and cities, according to a local memorandum issued by the Department of Budget and Management.

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The amount represented 57.45 percent of the total tax share, which also benefited other tobacco-growing provinces of Ilocos Norte, La Union and Abra.

In 2017, Ilocos Sur was allotted P1.9 billion as its share from the 2014 excise, aside from the P6.4 billion shared by its 34 towns and cities, according to a budget memorandum.

The provincial government bought the 1.3-ha lot for P60 million in 2007, Vicente said.

In subsequent years, at least P365 million was appropriated to build 88 foundation posts.

When Ilocos Sur Gov. Ryan Singson assumed office in 2013, about P100 million was spent on the building’s elevated floor, Vicente said. “They kept allocating funds for the project. If the 5-story building is worth P475 million as proposed, we should now need only P10 million to complete it,” Vicente said.

What shocked him and other tobacco farmers was when they heard the governor’s father, former Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson, said in a recent radio interview that the project would be discontinued because there were no available funds.

“So where did the tobacco farmers’ P465 million go?” Vicente asked.

“We waited for 11 years for its completion, and now he is saying that it will not be continued anymore? Isn’t that alarming?” he said.

Independent probe

“To end all claims, let the proper authorities investigate all these and other accusations of both camps,” said Chavit, incumbent Narvacan town councilor and a candidate for mayor next year.

Chavit said he had drafted a letter to President Duterte seeking a special audit of the convention center project and the use of tobacco tax shares by the Narvacan government in 2010.

“We request that the proper investigation or auditing agencies of the government be duly ordered to conduct the necessary inquiry and investigation and to proceed in filing the necessary cases before the proper tribunal should they find any irregularity or illegality in transactions,” Chavit said in the letter.

He pointed an accusing finger at the Zaragoza family, claiming they were behind Vicente’s revelations.

Vicente is running for a seat in the Ilocos Sur provincial board next year.

He is running under the slate of Narvacan Mayor Zuriel Zaragoza, who is running for governor.

“It’s an act of desperation from the Zaragozas because change is coming in Narvacan,” said Chavit, who is running against Mayor Zaragoza’s father, former Mayor Edgardo Zaragoza.

Edgardo offered to sign Chavit’s letter to Mr. Duterte, along with Governor Singson and Mayor Zaragoza, to prove that the issue was not politically motivated.

Vicente said the convention center was not the project that the tobacco farmers in the province had wanted.

Like other projects funded by excise in the past, tobacco farmers were not consulted, he said.

“What we are asking is for the province to sincerely use the funds for projects that would be good for the tobacco industry and bring better lives for farmers,” he said.

Livelihood projects

Under the law, tobacco excise may only be used for cooperative, livelihood, agro-industrial and infrastructure projects that would advance tobacco farmers’ self-reliance.

But since the provincial government had started receiving its excise shares, only about 2 percent were used for projects that benefited tobacco farmers, Vicente said.

The rest were spent on projects that had nothing to do with tobacco, he said.

In the past years, he said, local government officials would distribute a sack of ammonium sulfate fertilizer worth P500 and a bag of urea fertilizer worth P1,000 during wet seasons.

They also distributed 3 kilograms of hybrid rice from Thailand.

“So, these are all what we received, except this election time, when they are giving equipment, such as tractors, but to a selected few,” Vicente said.

Why only now?

Asked why he is coming out only now when the supposed problem had existed for years, Vicente said whistleblowers did not get support in the past.

Today, he said, he trusted Mr. Duterte would support him because of his anticorruption campaign.

“As Naftac president, it is my responsibility to take care of our rights. So we need justice. It should be very clear that we are only asserting our rights as tobacco farmers,” Vicente said. —With a report from Leoncio Balbin

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