THE National Food Authority (NFA) Council led by Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. yesterday appointed Piolito Santos, NFA assistant administrator for finance, as officer-in-charge (OIC) of the agency.
Santos said among his functions as OIC are “routine matters” but added he is requesting for additional functions that can further smoothen operations of the agency, especially with the suspension of 139 employees, including warehouse personnel nationwide.
“We really need to fix this so that we can open their warehouses and we can continue our service to the people,” he said.
Santos also reiterated that for this year, the NFA is targeting to buy 300,000 metric tons (MT) to 475,000 MT of palay from local farmers to fill up the country’s buffer stocks, especially that the agency has over P17 billion in available budget.
Of the amount, P9 billion has been allocated for this year and P8.2 billion came from last year’s excess allocation.
“For now, we have instructions to our department managers and the entire leadership of the NFA that we will change our ways of selling rice to our outlets to avoid similar issues that we’ve recently encountered,” Santos added.
An internal team from the DA and a separate one from the Office of the Ombudsman are conducting investigations on 139 NFA suspended employees for alleged anomalous sale of rice buffer stocks to favored traders. — Jed Macapagal