Free market miscreants are running circles around authorities selling smuggled onions online on one hand and profiting from allegedly stolen rice from out of government-owned warehouses operated by the National Food Authority (NFA).
This was learned Tuesday from the Department of Agriculture (DA) whose top officials appeal for the consuming public to stop patronizing smuggled onions sold online even as the agency probes an alleged anomalous sale of rice stolen from NFA storage facilities.
Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) officials said that aside from adversely impacting the income of domestic producers, smuggled onions are a health risk on unwitting consumers.
Gerald Glenn Panganiban, BPI director, told reporters Tuesday the agency has coordinated with the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to help monitor and stop the online sale of illegally obtained onions.
“When this was reported to us, we immediately wrote the PNP and our law enforcement authorities at the NBI and the Bureau of Customs” informing them of the activities, Panganiban said. According to him, police and customs officials quickly went to work in finding where the enterprising criminals operate.
The BPI said the PNP has issued a memorandum instructing its regional units to arrest the spread of illegally sourced onion sold online an in markets around the country.
According to Panganiban, sanitary and phytosanitary permits allowing the sale of the commodity have already been used up last year and that no more such permits have been issued since.
“Those alleged smuggled goods carry the risk of sanitary and phytosanitary pests or diseases so we hope the public will not patronize them, especially as we are not sure of their source,” Panganiban said.
As a consequnce, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. has ordered a thorough investigation into allegations the NFA has sold thousands of tons of rice to certain traders at a price disadvantageous to government.
Laurel has created a panel of investigators looking into allegations that certain NFA officials allegedly authorized the sale of milled rice stored in agency warehouses for P25 per kilo outside of a bidding process and after purchasing the grains for P23 per kilo.
“We do not brush aside reports of impropriety against officials of the DA, regardless of the source. We also welcome any government agency who may wish to conduct their own probe to ferret out the truth,” said Laurel, in a statement.
