Rice hoarders and smugglers

Batas Mauricio

EVEN now, many farmers are already highly appreciative of the efforts of President Duterte and Agriculture Secretary Manny Pinol to make sure that no further rice importation of any kind will be allowed at this point in time, particularly considering the assessment that current rice production, and the volume of rice already imported under the Duterte government, are already highly sufficient.

In fact, Pinol’s announcement that efforts by rice hoarders and rice smugglers to create an artificial rice shortage, a shortage they have already perfected in creating through the years despite bumper rice harvests by Filipino farmers, would be dealt with severely by the government through raids of known warehouses where rice is hidden, had been similarly met with glee.

This decisive action against manipulation of rice supply, usually by businessmen of foreign descent who have been thinking of nothing but to profit by the millions at the expense of Filipino farmers, is something totally unheard of in past regimes. Many are now saying there were no similar campaigns in the past against rice hoarders because officials during those times were in reality in cahoots with hoarders and smugglers for fat fees.

How did it happen that businessmen of foreign descent, who, in the past, were content with the buy and sell merely of bote garapa, tanso, and aluminum rejects, now control the country’s vital rice supply? The clear answer would be that, as we already pointed out here, corrupt Filipino officials conspired with them to give them that control.

As my radio partner Vic Somintac has been repeatedly expounding, a commission of just one peso per sack of rice that is imported into the country would already yield for the graft-prone officials multi-million peso grease money per importation.

Rice importation, in itself, therefore constitutes a highly profitable enterprise, so much so that even supposedly level-headed leaders of government scramble on top of one another to allow importation even if there is sufficient local production. Even a cursory analysis of what is happening now in the government agencies directly dealing with rice importation will show inordinate interest on the issue.

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Call it magic or charm, or whatever other language anyone may seem appropriate, but it would no longer be material at this point. What is important was that, through the appeals made by President Duterte, some 150 overseas Filipinos workers (OFWs) who have been jobless for quite sometime in Saudi Arabia have now been brought back to the Philippines, free of charge.

The uncertainty of what was to happen to them while they were in Saudi Arabia, and the legal complications brought about by their expired visas and other immigration problems, were much too much to bear for the OFWs, and for their families as well. It was therefore heaven-sent for all of them that Duterte managed to convince Saudi officials to allow them to finally go home.

There is a dearth of information about how Duterte did it, but I would like to venture an informed guess: perhaps, Duterte simply asked for it from King Salman Bin Abdulaziz, urging compassion for the long-suffering OFWs. King Salman, on the other hand, perhaps wasn’t able to say “no”, since Duterte had not asked anything for himself, but was concerned only about his countrymen.

All is well that ends well? Maybe, but as news reports indicate, there are more OFWs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world who have been ousted from their works, or who have been made to undergo great abuses from their employers, that needed to be flown back to their families in the Philippines.

These OFWS have tasted already much grief, too, and they have to be attended to likewise by President Duterte. But this is going to require not just more legwork, more maneuvers and therefore more time to be executed satisfactorily, but also more prayers and spiritual strengthening on the part of the OFWs themselves and their families.
E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com