Wednesday, August 06, 2008 Mercado: Urge NBI probe on NFA By Ram Mercado First Person
IT'S causing heavy political damage to the President here and elsewhere.
Ms. Elvira Obana, the well publicized NFA Pampanga manager should ask, and even welcome, the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct investigations into reported diversion of NFA stocks to alleged middlemen fronting for rice dealers for resale in the commercial market.
Should the NBI step into this scandal, the agency will discover how millions of pesos can be made in a week's transaction involving government subsidized rice that is channeled to dealers for commercial use through the collusion of registered "retailers" who re-sell their lawful allocation for a fee. Most of the diverted stock is hoarded by rice cartel groups who re-milled the grain and pass it to consumers at P28 per kilo
This anomaly cannot be made possible without a modus vivendi between NFA officials who are protected, or have a legal recourse as defense, by the suspect group disguised as Pampanga Rice Retailers Association. A lifestyle check on certain PRRA officials will disclose a connection to the profitable operations.
If you are a duly-accredited rice retailer with the privilege of purchasing two hundred bags a week, you do not have to transport, repack and market the staple cereal for sale to legitimate end users at the mandated price of Pl8.50 per kilo. All you have to do is arrange with the front agents, or some rice dealers themselves, to bring out the supply and get paid well for each bag "sold."
In this wise, the "retailer" would be saving in transportation, marketing, and storage cost for his allotted stock while earning an agreed amount (patong) in consigning his/her stock to the "dealers" who divert the cereal to be re-milled and sold in the commercial market at P28/kg.
All the NBI has to do is to conduct undercover surveillance of the hauler trucks/vehicles that line up daily to procure the retailers quota-allocation for the week, or if the agents will go deeper, check the documents and reconcile the delivery in the exact number of bags to a particular retailer at a specific address.
If there is a noticeable scarcity of legit NFA rice stock in the few active retail shops in every town (there should be at least one or two stores in every barangay), it only means that the conniving retailers had already sold their allocations to the syndicated operators allegedly within the Association itself. Right, Manager Obana? Your published regular photo ops displaying huge stocks of rice stocks in your warehouse do not cancel this ugly situation. Please furnish the public a list of accredited retailers and their respective addresses to let our people know where they can buy their NFA rice without hustle.
The long lines of rice-desperate folk everywhere queue under the heat or rain, struggling to buy NFA rice at subsidized price. Their daily ordeal, caused by rice diversion for commercial purpose, is one reason why even the poor folk would give a bad approval rating for President Arroyo.
EMISSION TEST FEE. I wish our hardworking and usually garrulous lawmakers and members of city and provincial sanggunian bodies will take serious action on the exorbitant and unreasonably excessive emission test fee for motor vehicles, a requirement for registration. Local oppositors to e-VAT should join our sanggunian members in protesting the P400 emission test fee, which motorists denounced as objectionable and unjust. The testing centers, operating in cahoots reportedly with the LTO agencies, almost always grade, then certify the worst smoke-belching vehicle as having "passed" the test. Even when the tester would cough and sneeze with the bellows of carbon monoxide emitted.
The emission test shops have become legitimate collection conduits for the LTO. If these were truly and genuinely performing their honest testing on vehicles, how explain the proliferation of vehicles, from trucks to tricycles spewing black and foul smoke in the roads and streets?
The test, a 30-second procedure, or even less, inserts a probing rod into the exhaust pipe while the engine runs. The procedure is then photographed as proof of compliance. All this for P400! The exaction, thanks to LTO officials, is nothing but reasonable. It takes the appearance of a sanctioned straight-in-your face racket. Last year the test fee was only P300, and the test centers do not spend for fuel spent by the motorists in running their engines for the procedure to justify the rate increase.
While the LTO in San Fernando conducts the emission test for public utility vehicles, several private testing centers operate in Angeles. Motorists suspect these establishments are the legalized collecting stations per se for the LTO in a legal, familiar, but unmistakable "bukol" job.
"KAPAMILYA" HATE JOB. I sympathize with Sec. Ed Pamintuan who recently was grilled and raked over the coals by the Korina Sanchez-Ted Faylon TV tambalan, hosts of ANC's "Harapan."
Clearly the two feisty partners reflected their firm's (ABS-CBN) bias against or hatred for the present administration. They tried to embarrass the Palace super boy by subjecting him to implied anomalies by his bosses in connection with the NorthRail project. Sec. Ed, not yet part of the NorthRail fiasco then, was being asked to disprove the faults/irregularities he never participated as a deciding official. When he denied/clarified his non-involvement or his defense of the project, Korina snickered in mock venom and glee while Faylon grimaced in insulting contempt, his eyes rolled upwards, with hands held high as in Praise the Lord! Implying that Pamintuan was not telling the truth, the two inflicted the visibly irked Secretary with sarcasm and acts of indignity.
The firebomb effect, plus scurrilous mocking canned laughter used in comedy shows accompanied their barrage of inquisition on the hapless Super Boy followed by a cloud of smoke, symbolizing ritual burning of the beleaguered PGMA confidante.
Sec. Ed has already his plate full but had to take in the Northrail job. It's the President's wish as conferment of her trust on the capability of the multi-tasking former Angeles city mayor. It appears that the project had bogged down due to many unsolved obstacles and unforeseen developments. Our super boy, who holds more job titles than the Duke-husband of the Queen of England may find himself in a Sisyphean situation, with his expected perpetual pushing of the boulder (the NorthRail project) uphill only to slide downhill again where it began. This is definitely a lost cause for our super Ed.
