Clarification
| LETTER |
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Dear Editor:
It is quite unfortunate that our statement of facts about what we in the new administration were confronted with when we assumed office are to be construed as “lies” simply because we were so transparent to say what we actually saw. This refers to the item entitled “Lies to Live With” in the column Frontline published in The Daily Tribune last Sept. 23.
As a fellow journalist and columnist, please allow me to clarify your take against me. I stand by my pronouncement when I assumed my position as administrator that the National Food Authority (NFA) was swimming in rice. This was made in the context of the agency’s mandate which states that it should maintain a 30-day supply of rice as food security stocks beginning July 1 until the end of September or the lean production period. Beginning July this year, however, the agency’s rice inventory was sufficient for some 56 days food security stocks, just four days short of doubling the required volume.
As for the “rotting rice,” I would like to emphasize that like all other grains, rice has a limited shelf life, specifically six months. Again, using July as reference period, when I visited some NFA warehouses during my familiarization process, I noticed we still have rice stocks which were imported sometime in 2008. At the latest, these should have been in the market in the first half of last year, and yet, still formed part of our present inventory. For this reason, I ordered an independent system and management audit of NFA to enhance operational efficiency and in the process, also find out if we still have aging inventory as we are seriously pursuing the thrust of marketing only quality rice under our program Total Grains Quality Management (TGQM)..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101001com6.html
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