Amid controversy, NFA assures public of unhampered operations

The National Food Authority assured the public on Friday of its unhampered operations amid the controversy surrounding the alleged irregularities in the purchase of 75,000 bags of rice.

Newly designated NFA officer-in-charge Piolito Santos said they have issued a special order to regional and branch offices to designate OICs following the preventive suspension against 139 employees of the agency.

Santos also assured that the NFA will continue its mandate of ensuring enough buffer stock of rice for the country.

"Ang NFA naman very resilient yan sa palay procurement and we are preparing for a procurement operation this coming month. Actually, procurement season na ngayong March, April, May [and] we are targeting about 475,000 metric tons to be procured this year," he said.

[The NFA is very resilient in palay procurement and we are preparing for a procurement operation this coming month. Actually, it's already procurement season this March, April, May and we are targeting about 475,000 metric tons to be procured this year.]

For his part as OIC, Santos said he will execute routinary functions but he would be asking for additional powers from the NFA Council and Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. to allow to serve other functions such as the transfer of some employees and appointments.

Santos described the general sentiments at NFA as "embattled," prompting him to organize a nationwide meeting to keep the agency's morale high.

"We will talk about how to make NFA an agency that can perform even with these problems or challenges in the National Food Authority," he said.

He added that the NFA will be able to provide the complete list of warehouses that are associated with the sale of the rice in question.

"Ina-assure namin na bibigay namin lahat ng mga kailangan nilang dokumento ... nagbigay na kami ng mga documents like sa Central Office and we provided all the documents to the honorable Ombudsman," Santos said.

[We assured them that we will provide all needed documents ... we have provided documents to the central office and to the honorable Ombudsman.]  — RSJ, GMA Integrated News