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DAVAO
CITY—At past lunchtime, rice retailer Rosario Perez
knows that she would be in for another grueling day, a
few hours actually, at the parish’s outlet for National
Food Authority (NFA)-retailed rice imports in barangay
Talomo in the southern part of this city.
Upon
riding a two-seater tricycle, she was told by the driver
that “they are already queuing up there, waiting for
you.” She smiled wryly.
On her
way to the small store—an extension at the back of the
parish office and enclosed with metal bars and grills—a
plump, short-haired woman approached and held her hand
and muttered something like “we have been here....”
But
before she could finish a sentence, Perez dropped off
the conversation and hastily entered her NFA-licensed
retail outlet store and locked the door behind her and
another woman aide.
Around
the two open sides of the store, plastic bags—marked
with the names of shopping malls that once used to carry
groceries—poked in between the widely spaced iron bars
that lock the store around.
The
buyers of rationed NFA rice, imported from Vietnam, have
been in the compound of the San Lorenzo Ruiz church in
barangay Talomo, about 10 kilometers south of downtown
Davao, as early as
10:30
a.m., waiting for the distribution that was supposed to
be done at 1 p.m. yet.
But as
in the past days since the first week of April,
distribution starts at past noon, and before 1 p.m., the
allotted five bags of NFA rice are already done.
On a
particular Thursday, the start of the weekly
distribution, distribution has been quite long,
finishing by past 3 p.m.
There
are no lines—only old and young buyers, mostly women and
no able-bodied men, each holding on to the bars for
those who came earlier, and pushing their bodies at
those before them.
Perez
looks first at the throng of hungry and anxious faces,
trying to decipher in her mind who had been at the store
the previous day and were turned down after the last
sack was rationed.
Then she
starts packing three-kilo allocations, while her aide
stands by to hand back the filled plastic bag.
Each
person shouts at Perez to get her attention, pleading to
take their bags. “I’ve been here yesterday but I was not
able to avail [myself] of rice. So I’ve been here this
morning. Please.”
She is
unmoved. Her aide is also swarmed with hands each time
she gives back the filled bags, covering her face with
all those bags shoved against her.
One old
skinny man throws his red plastic bag with the money in
it and mumbled, “Who cannot notice and pick it up?”
It was
picked up later, after three customers are served.
Perez
told the BusinessMirror that she hopes the NFA would
consider increasing the allocation in her store from
only five sacks of rice and had approached NFA manager
in
Davao City,
Lorenzo Camayang.
Camayang
told the BusinessMirror that he has allowed it, but
Perez laments that the allocation cannot be increased
however, “because our capital is only up to 21 sacks per
week.”
Despite
picking up some tiff with customers, Perez said she
pities them “because these are really the very poor in
the community, and they come here with their day’s
little earning just to buy that rice.”
Retailing the NFA rice in her parish started in February
last year, the second batch of parish-based
organizations that availed themselves of the Malacañang
offer to distribute rice. Since then and until about the
last week of March, “we could hardly sell one sack.”
But
after the panic over the rice stocks, “people have been
waiting out there every day.”
Sometimes he would scold the rowdy customers. “We have
been selling NFA rice here since last year and not one
of you here would care to buy because you said the rice
smells bad. But now the prices of commercial rice have
gone up, suddenly the NFA rice smells sweet.”
Fr.
Rommel Banilad, associate parish priest of San Lorenzo
Ruiz Church, said he is concerned with how people have
become desperate for food. “It’s written in their faces.
They’re concerned that they cannot buy the NFA rice, and
they are desperate to get it.”
He said
he would like to appeal to the government to increase
the allocation. “If they want us to answer the needs of
these people, they have to increase our allocation,
because five sacks is not really enough.”
“My
suggestion is not only for this retail store here but
for all its outlets,” he said. |
