15 November 2007
LEGAZPI CITY—PROVINCIAL officials concerned about Albay’s rice shortage are blaming some traders who have “re-milled and re-bagged” National Food Authority (NFA) rice intended for the poor to sell at commercial prices.
Board member Celso Aytona said the irregularities happened in Tabaco City, involving half of the wealthy Chinese-Filipino traders.
One businessman, he said, was allegedly shipping 5,000 bags of NFA rice to Mindanao monthly and even tried to bribe him in exchange for his withdrawal of the 1,000-bag rice allocation from the grains agency.
Vice Gov. Brando Sael affirmed Aytona’s claim, saying half of NFA rice coming from the central office was being sold at higher prices.
Gov’t version
The NFA’s provincial manager, Eden Redillas, however, claimed that the release of NFA rice to authorized outlets was being regulated and its distribution in the province monitored daily.
Redillas said the shipment of 5,000 bags of rice to Mindanao monthly could not be easily done since shippers of more than 1,000 bags of rice would have to seek permit from the NFA office.
She asked the provincial board to identify any NFA employees involved in the alleged irregularity so she could initiate action.
“First, we would have to determine if they are indeed NFA employees because there were cases in the past when fictitious NFA employees communicated with traders in Iriga City,” Redillas said.
Albay is suffering a year-round rice deficit of around 1.4 million bags—the biggest in five years—due to the series of typhoons and other calamities that hit the province late last year. Rice fields devastated by the typhoons have not yet been fully rehabilitated, Redillas said.
No water
Destroyed irrigation systems have also deprived water supply to rice plantations.
Heavy rains during the rice crops’ flowering stage could have caused low fertilization, the NFA official said.
The biggest rice deficits of 807,000 bags were reported in the second district, which is generally not rice-producing. The district covers Legazpi, Daraga, Camalig, Manito and Rapu-Rapu.
The first district was short by 411,000 bags, while the third district, considered the rice granary of Albay, was only 148,000 bags short.
Albay had 50,000 bags of rice stockpiled on Thursday—good for only four days, Redillas said.
Some 150,000 bags of Thailand rice were expected to arrive in Tabaco last week and 160,000 more bags of Vietnamese rice on Nov. 2 to fill in the rice gap. Ephraim Aguilar, Inquirer Southern Luzon
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