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The government on Wednesday ordered police to arrest
rice hoarders and illegal traders as the country struggles to cope
with rising prices of the key food staple.
Police will be deployed to
warehouses owned by the National Food Authority (NFA), the state
rice-importing agency, to prevent any pilfering by rogue traders,
Silverio Alarcio, the operations chief of the Philippine National
Police said in a statement.
The move is aimed at preempting
the “impact on peace and order of price rises not only in rice but
other basic commodities,” the statement added.
President Gloria Arroyo this week
said she will negotiate for more rice shipments from Thailand and
other neighboring countries to avert a possible supply crisis during
the lean months from July to September.
Analysts and farmer groups have
said traders hoarding rice could also force the retail price of the
grain to artificially rise. Experts have warned of social unrest if
prices soar amid the supply crunch.
Alarcio also ordered regional
commanders to work closely with local governments to fight the
illegal rice trade and said police would follow delivery trucks to
ensure that government rice did not “end up in illegal
warehouses.”
“We will do that and hit hard
on the hoarders who are causing this artificial crisis,” he said.
The Department of Justice joined
the drive by forming a five-man Anti-Rice Hoarding Task Force.
In creating the task force,
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said he wanted rice hoarders charged
with “economic sabotage,” a non-bailable offense. The group will
be armed with Presidential Decree 4, which penalizes “unlawful
acts or omissions inimical to the preservation and protection of the
country’s rice supply.”
The task force is led by Senior
State Prosecutor Roberto Lao as chairman and Senior Prosecutors D.C.
Galvez, Philip de la Cruz and Nestor Lazaro, and Public Attorney Ma.
Rhodora Salazar as members. It is authorized to seek assistance from
law-enforcement and administrative agencies.
Under Department Order 190 that
created the group, the National Bureau of Investigation will gather
evidence against suspected rice hoarders.
Gonzalez said they are initially
targeting the owners of the 111 warehouses in Bocaue, Bulacan
province, north of Manila. The warehouses were storing 25,000 to
40,000 sacks of rice each, for a total of some 400,000 sacks,
roughly worth P400 million at P1,000 per sack.
“There’s no report yet [from
the National Bureau of Investigation]. We will be able to know if a
syndicate is behind it if we would be able to identify the owners of
the warehouses,” he said. The bureau, he added, is also
investigating in Cebu.
Gonzalez admitted the task force
will not solve hoarding, but that “it can help certainly” as
hoarders are faced with the threat of prosecution.
He said President Arroyo had
ordered the use of Army trucks to carry the rice and palay purchased
by the National Food Authority in far-flung areas to spare private
rice haulers from paying the P500 asked by local government units
along the way.
He said Defense Secretary Gilbert
Teodoro had already pledged 200 trucks or one-half of the needed 400
trucks.
The President, Gonzalez added,
had also ordered the release of P20 billion for irrigation during a
recent meeting with Catholic bishops.
President asks for help
Also on Wednesday, Mrs. Arroyo
appealed to the private sector to help the government implement and
monitor its food programs amid worries of a food shortage.
“To ensure cheap food supply,
the government, local government units, the private sector, and all
other organizations must band together,” the President told a
Cabinet meeting that she convened last night shortly after her
arrival from a three-day visit to Hong Kong.
As an initial move to meet the
government’s objective, she also ordered state corporations and
institutions to utilize their P5-billion surplus—representing 5
percent of last year’s combined budget surplus of P100
billion—to subsidize farmers and ensure steady rice supply. The
surplus will fund the “Green Pasture” program of Filipino
farmers.
Mrs. Arroyo said the local
government units have around P32 billion in surplus last year.
The National Food Authority has
started selling its regular milled and premium rice directly to
heavily populated and depressed areas in Metro Manila and
neighboring Rizal province to provide ordinary consumers a chance to
avail of the good-quality but low-priced government rice on a
regular basis.
Its spokesman, Rex Estoperez,
said they have begun selling rice through rolling stores, which also
sell other basic commodities.
--Angelo S. Samonte, William B. Depasupil,
Ira Karen Apanay And AFP
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