John Milton Lozande, acting chair of the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) said his federation is backing House Resolution No. 2413 directing the House Committee on Agriculture and Food to conduct a deep probe on rampant sugar smuggling in the country.
Lozande is also the secretary-general of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), UMA’s local affiliate in
Negros Island, where more than half of the country’s total sugar output is produced.
The House resolution was filed by Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Neri Colmenares. “We back Rep. Colmenares’ initiative to investigate sugar smuggling, long considered by industry stakeholders and even ordinary sugar workers as a serious matter that government should immediately address,” said Lozande.
Colmenares’ resolution noted that “the reported series of smuggling happened and swelled into an alarming level in such a short period of time, amounting to an estimated total of P140 million during the second quarter of 2015, not including what may have passed through Bureau of Customs (BOC) monitoring, as admitted by Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina.”
UMA observed that sugar smuggling became even more pronounced despite purported “tighter government policy” through the implementation of the recently- enacted Sugar Industry Development Act (SIDA) of 2015.
“Even before Pres. Aquino signed the SIDA last April, UMA had already forewarned concerned Congress and Senate committees that come 2015 sugar smuggling in the country would have certainly gotten out of hand. We have long expressed this point in several of our position papers precisely criticizing the rationale behind the sugar bills which eventually became the SIDA,” said Lozande.
UMA decried government’s “flawed framework in protecting the sugar industry and its complete lack of will to challenge the very evil that has made the current crisis imminent – liberalization in agriculture.”
UMA noted that “only through the repudiation of unequal neoliberal trade and economic treaties such as the GATTWTO and the Asean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), and the implementation of genuine land reform can the crisis in the sugar industry and in the whole sector of agriculture can decisively be resolved.”
UMA also blasted certain government agencies for corruption in handling sugar funds.
“If (government) cannot as of yet be relied upon to pursue the aforementioned solutions, it should at least try to look into the alleged cases of corruption (in) irregularly hefty bonuses of executives in the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), or into the reported anomalies in the implementation of the SAP (Social Amelioration Program for sugar workers),” Lozande also said.
In a position paper submitted to the Senate last year, UMA said “it is very timely as well for the Senate to probe the extent of sugar smuggling in the country and set up ways to pre-empt its escalation especially come 2015 when sugar tariffs for imported sugar, as dictated by rapacious global neoliberal policies, finally becomes zero rated.”
In his resolution, Colmenares noted that “the sale of illegally imported sugar shall only be possible if the SRA approves for the auction of the confiscated shipments of sugar.”
UMA pointed out that with reported corruption at the SRA, the public must also be made aware of how government utilizes proceeds from smuggled sugar.
“If these shipments are not returned to Thailand, burned, destroyed or thrown out to sea, then sugar workers would not want to hear that funds culled from these illegal shipments have disappeared in thin air – only to bankroll Roxas and the Liberal Party’s bid for six more tortuous years along Daang Matuwid,” said Lozande.
UMA quoted Anakpawis Partylist Rep. Fernando Hicap as saying that “Torres will not be brave enough to pull this daring stunt (at the BOC) without any connection in high level government offices.”
“We cannot discount the fact that some unscrupulous officials running in next year’s elections are ordering Torres to collect campaign funds from sugar smuggling,” said Hicap.
