Allow me to respond to the allegations of some 30 National Food Authority Employees Association (NFAEA) officers in a letter that appeared in the Inquirer’s July 22 issue. The NFAEA officers alleged that they exposed a number of anomalies in the NFA, among them, the naphthalene-contaminated imported rice in 1991 and the planned transfer of the NFA central office to a plush building in Pasig City—specifically One San Miguel Avenue building, which I mentioned in my previous letter. (Inquirer, 6/28/11)
What happened to these exposés? Are these anomalies, which the NFAEA claimed to have exposed, a matter of public record? The NFAEA cannot even mention anyone who was prosecuted for graft and corruption and meted out the appropriate penalty because of its alleged exposés. The fact is the NFAEA did nothing to recover the P15-million down payment made for the lease of the San Miguel building, and millions of pesos more spent for the construction of partitions in that building. The construction was started by the NFA until the planned transfer of the NFA central office was abandoned. But more significantly, the NFAEA turned a blind eye to the sale of NFA rice through the “Sale through Market Determined Prices” (SMDP), which is the single biggest reason for the financial losses of the NFA in the past decade. The NFAEA cannot even account for the roughly P1.2 million in contributions from its members (as of this writing, despite my several letters to the NFAEA president, Roman Sanchez) for the purpose of helping Romy Ver and the late Rey Capones in their quest for justice. And yet the killer of Capones was allowed to retire with complete benefits under Executive Order 366 by the former NFA management without any whimper from the NFAEA.
As to my losing candidacy in the 2002 election for NFAEA central office president, the record would show that I did not campaign in any department, and I did not post a single piece of campaign paraphernalia in the central office, and yet I won in my department and in the legal department. While I lost in the 2010 election of board trustees of the NFA Provident Fund, I must emphasize that I won in my department and in our legal department, and I got more votes from another candidate who was the president of an NFA multi-purpose cooperative. We all lost miserably to the candidates actively supported by the NFAEA and its allies in the field offices.
—JOSE B. TAGANAHAN,
regional engineer,
NFA Region 10,
Cagayan de Oro City