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Warehouse owners and traders in the Philippines found
to be hoarding rice will be charged with “economic sabotage, which
carries a life sentence, or plunder,” Justice Secretary Raul
Gonzalez said Thursday.
Plunder was punishable by death
until President Gloria Arroyo outlawed capital punishment a few
years ago.
The government, Gonzalez warned,
could even file plunder charges against traders engaged in rice
hoarding.
“If the amount [made from
hoarding] reaches P50 million, it could be plunder [charges that are
awaiting the hoarders]. Take the case of 11 warehouses in Bulacan [a
province north of Manila where] each warehouse has 40 tons of rice.
That’s why I told my panel to look into this again if there are
public officials involved,” he said.
Gonzalez added that government
agents had started swooping down on illegal rice traders in the
central city of Cebu and that 111 other traders in Luzon, the
country’s biggest group of islands, were also on his list.
Evidence was being gathered
against unscrupulous traders, who also will be charged with economic
sabotage.
“Our first initiative is to ask
for the help of Filipinos who can give us information, because we
are not here to witch-hunt,” Gonzalez told reporters.
He said he had ordered agents
from the National Bureau of Investigation to “be very rigid in
looking” for evidence.
President Gloria Arroyo had
ordered the raids to help avert a rice shortage, the staple food for
the country’s 86 million people, which could trigger social
unrest.
She has also ordered huge imports
of rice from neighboring countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, and
cancelled permits to rice dealers reselling state-subsidized rice to
avoid artificial price increases.
The moves angered rice dealers
and distributors, who have threatened to stop selling rice across
the archipelago.
Gonzalez said only rice hoarders
were being targeted, and that traders and warehouse owners found to
be “legit need not fear.”
“This is an emergency
situation, [and] they should understand,” he added.
The President further ordered
state universities and colleges to make their gymnasiums available
for rice storing and prepare their vacant lands for palay
demonstration farming.
She ordered, too, the Armed
Forces to help deliver rice to far-flung and depressed areas by
using their available cargo planes and trucks.
The Armed Forces will be fielding
400 trucks to take over from truckers complaining of delivery
difficulties due to high costs, Gonzalez said.
“If we were using Army trucks,
soldiers will no longer stop the truckers at checkpoints and will
not pay fees or bribes to policemen manning the checkpoints. For
instance, if the products come from Isabela [a province north of
Manila], truckers complain that they have to incur heavy costs,”
he added.
Gonzalez said they are already
asking the help of Chinese-Filipino businessmen to prevent rice
hoarding and go after unscrupulous traders.
“We are also trying to protect
their interests [Tsinoy businessmen], so they should help us. In so
far as the businessmen [are concerned], there’s no directive,”
he added. “That is addressed to NFA [National Food Authority] and
Department of Agriculture. My directive is prosecute, investigate
and prosecute those hoarders.”
The government has not set any
deadline and will continue its campaign against illegal trade until
the prices of rice stabilize, Gonzalez said.
“This [campaign] is a
continuing thing. We cannot have a deadline until prices of
commodities stabilize. There are many factors in prices rising. Not
because of hoarding, always, some because of inadequacies of
farm-to-market roads, and the involvement of middle men who control
prices,” he added.
Gonzalez appealed to traders and
distributors, whose licenses were cancelled, not to proceed with
their planned rice holiday.
“That is just temporarily [the
cancellation] because the government wants to make sure that no
licenses would be abused. That’s the situation now, and we hope
they will understand that,” he said. The traders and distributors,
instead of holding the holiday, Gonzalez added, should cooperate
with the government.
He assured the public of enough
rice supply.
“As of this point, there is no
danger that we will lack rice. What we need is buffer good for three
months. Right now, 57 days, there’s no danger. There will be
harvest in May and lean months will come in June, July, and
August,” Gonzalez said.
Rice is a politically sensitive
commodity in the Philippines, one of the world’s largest importers
of the grain, which households consume three times a day on average.
--Angelo S. Samonte, Ira Karen Apanay and AFP
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