The NFA policy and scandal
THE PUNCH’s news story this week about the status of National Food Authority (NFA)-Pangasinan’s rice buffer stock in the province reveals both the agency’s standard operating policy and the magnitude of the anomaly behind the sale of 75,000 bags of buffer stock by the NFA central office to two favored rice traders.
The reported claim of the suspended NFA administrator that there were no irregularities committed in that sale is easily refuted by our news story based on the interview of our Associate Editor Eva Visperas with Frederick Dulay, assistant branch manager of the National Food Authority in Pangasinan.
His casual revelation of the standard operating policy of NFA on how buffer stock is managed and disposed of hits the nail on the head. After all, it’s primary and only mandate is to provide buffer stock to local governments in crisis situations, particularly in the middle of a calamity.
Clearly, NFA is not in the business of selling its buffer stock to traders.
Evidently there was no established policy that even remotely suggests that buffer stocks can or should be old to rice traders after always losing in the competition to buy rice directly from farmers. Memorandums issued providing the authority to some NFA officials don’t make it appear that there were no irregularities. Instead, these are the people’s evidence that the sale of NFA buffer stock rice to traders were criminal, to say the least.
The decision of the Ombudsman, therefore, to order the preventive suspension of all NFA’s key officials to allow for the investigation to continue reinforces the faith of the populace in the country’s justice system.
This is one scandal in the national government that should not be allowed to be treated like the enduring Mona Lisa song by Nat King Cole – “They just lie there, and they die there.”
Those responsible for protecting the rice cartel’s privilege to manipulate prices whimsically out of greed at the expense of the people must be made to be accountable for their crimes.
Let’s hope that President Marcos Jr. sees this scandal as a great opportunity to redeem himself, after failing to deliver on his promise to bring down the price of rice down. He can set a legacy about national leadership that eluded his father, President Ferdinand Sr. by arresting those in the ride cartel and the criminal NFA officials and charging them in court.
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