The National Food Authority has been selling NFA rice to its accredited retailers nationwide at P25/kilo or P1,250/bag of 50 kilos, which these retailers must sell direct to consumers at P27/kilo.
Have you seen lately if there is NFA rice being sold in your public market by licensed NFA retailers, with a price tag of P27/kilo? If there is none, please report and complain to your nearest NFA office or to your elected officials so that they can complain for you. NFA rice is heavily subsidized by the government, so the consuming public must be able to buy it from time to time.
Call your radio stations and ask the NFA, through these radio stations, where the cheap NFA rice is sold to end-consumers, so that the concerned government officials and employees will wake up from their slumber. There really are people in the NFA who are “thick-faced” (makapal ang mukha) and who will not act even if their attention has already been called, and/or connive with the retailers (willing or unwilling) to cheat us Filipino consumers of cheap NFA rice.
So, consuming public and the media, this is our job: to be vigilant. I have done my part in a small way.
—JOSE TAGANAHAN,
joe_taganahan@yahoo.com