“I set the conduct of the investigation when I noticed that storm-damaged palay bought by the members of the NFA procurement team was being dried in our solar dryer here in increasing volume. I asked our regional quality assurance officer to conduct quality audit of the grains bought by our procurement team,” Amadeo de Guzman, director of NFA-Region 3, said in an interview.
He said the quality assurance officer, Zenaida Garcia, confirmed in her report that the procured palay was below the NFA standards.
Sixteen officials and employees are currently under investigation, De Guzman revealed. Five of them have been relieved of their duties pending results of the investigation.
“In the first place, there was no order for our NFA procurement teams to buy the storm-damaged harvest of the farmers,” De Guzman said. “What I gave was an authority to determine how many of the storm-affected palay can be bought by NFA from the farmers in case we are given the go-signal by higher authorities to buy them in order to help the farmers,” he added.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM), however, denied the NFA request of P350 million additional fund to procure storm-damaged palay.
“Nobody from our end ordered the buying of storm-damaged palay from the farmers. They acted on their own,” he said referring to the members of the procurement teams and their accomplices.
Nueva Ecija, the rice bowl of Central Luzon, suffered losses of P3.4 billion in expected rice harvest when Typhoon Lando whipped nearby Aurora and Nueva Vizcaya, its fury felt in the province.
According to a report by provincial agriculturist Serafin Santos, 7,088 hectares of harvestable palay was totally damaged by the wind, flood and silt while 130,417 hectares of the standing crop were partially damaged.
Most of the affected rice crop was about to be harvested while the rest were in the flowering stage.
The storm-damaged palay was reportedly bought at P11 a kilogram and was later reported to have been bought at P17 per kilogram. The procured palay had moisture content of 15 to 30 percent which was way below the standard 14 percent moisture content set by the NFA.
The anomaly resulted in the pocketing of P6 per kilogram or a total of P300 per bag of 50 kilograms, De Guzman said.
“I gave last Tuesday my full report to NFA Administrator Renan Dalisay regarding the anomaly. I recommended the filing of appropriate charges against the erring officials and the palay procurement personnel,” De Guzman said.
He disclosed that Dalisay would form an investigating panel from the main office to widen the probe and determine who will be charged criminally and administratively.
De Guzman said the panel will also determine some private persons involved in the anomaly, the mastermind, and others who had a hand in it.
“I welcome the declaration of the administrator to widen the probe, my office included, to determine and charge those who carried out the anomaly,” De Guzman said.
