Wednesday, June 04, 2008 DOJ to resume anti-rice hoarding drive
THE Department of Justice (DOJ) said it will restart its campaign against rice hoarding following calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to declare a state of emergency in Mindanao due to rising rice prices in the region.
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez Sr. said the campaign was temporarily shelved after the President directed the Anti-Rice Hoarding Task Force to go after those rice traders diverting their stocks.
He said the move was because the President was afraid these unscrupulous traders might decide to unload all their stocks in the market and saturate it, leaving little for the lea months to come.
“I have ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to restart the campaign against rice hoarders. We sort of suspended this campaign before when the President said we should concentrate on the diversion of stocks. But they are now taking advantage of that situation, so we will go after their scalp,” he said.
Gonzalez said rice hoarding in Mindanao was much worse, but it was not an isolated concern.
“When we are campaigning against rice hoarders, we suddenly realized the repercussions that the hoarders, out of fear, they would just throw all their stocks even at a time when there is enough and when the lean months come and there is no sufficient supply,” he said.
The President has ordered the task force to look into the alleged rice hoarding in Mindanao following a report from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) that commercial rice in the area are being sold at P51 per kilo, when it was being sold in Metro Manila at the price of just P30 a kilo.
Davao del Sur Governor Douglas Cagas has asked Arroyo to allow the state to take control of the prices of rice in his area and to allow their authorities to raid warehouses of suspected hoarders.
Cagas said this is necessary to prevent riots and other disturbances that have occurred over similar problems in other countries.
The National Food Authority (NFA) has traced part of the problem of high rice prices to the immediate shipping of harvests to Manila, at least in Davao.
Agriculture Undersecretary Jesus Emmanuel Paras meantime said hoarding did not trigger the high prices of rice in Mindanao, particularly in Davao.
Paras said the high prices is due to the withholding of palay (unhusked rice) by the farmers in anticipation of the last harvested crop or the season. He said the farmers are hoping to sell the last palay stock at P24 a kilo, from the current rates of P17 per kilo. (ECV/JMR/Sunnex)
