A NETWORK of food-security advocates on Wednesday chided Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap for pointing an accusing finger at local government units as liable for the anomalous P218.7-million Ginintuang Masaganang Ani rice program last year, saying the country’s food czar is equally responsible and should be held liable for the latest scam to hit the Department of Agriculture.

In a statement, Task Force Food Sovereignty (TFFS) said Yap is not yet “off the hook,” saying the official is responsible for almost half the total amount of discrepancies that was uncovered by the Commission on Audit (COA).

Citing the COA report, TFFS said that of the P3.98 billion observed with discrepancies, Yap is responsible for projects and programs with irregularities amounting to P1.84 billion.

“This is 46 percent of the total amount observed with discrepancies by COA,” Arze Glipo, chief of the Integrated Rural Development Foundation, the secretariat of the TFFS, said. She also said their network is not surprised with the recent mess at the agriculture department. “The COA report is long in coming. Farmers have known all along this rice scam because they have not been receiving the supposed subsidies for seeds and fertilizers. The COA has just confirmed this fact,” said Glipo.

“Secretary Yap cannot absolve himself of the culpability in the mess, based on at least six COA observations. An investigation by an independent body, excluding Secretary Yap, is urgently needed,” said Glipo.

These six COA observations directly attributed to the DA Office of the Secretary are the following:

§          Observation No. 2—Postharvest facilities  projects implemented by  the  National Agribusiness Corp. (Nabcor) lack information/data for failure to submit liquidation reports, where confirmation notes remain unanswered—cost: P300 million;

§          Observation No. 13 – The Enhanced Website Electronic Sanitary and Phytosanitary Certification System project was not pursued posing imminent obsolescence of the software and hardware—cost: P29.42 million;

§          Observation No. 15—Posters and pamphlets remain undistributed—cost: P0.25 million;

§          Observation No. 23—The existing guidelines on the utilization of the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund  did not provide for maximum limit for public investment, allowing the DA to release a grant totaling P725 million to Nabcor and the Bureau of Postharvest Research and Extension, at the expense of loan proponents who are legitimate beneficiaries of the fund—P725 million; and

§          Observation No. 24—A circuitous and unnecessary transfer of funds from regular and PDAF funds to Nabcor, as conduit for proposed projects, in which the unliquidated fund transfers accumulated to P1.067 billion—P724.26 million; and

§          Observation No. 36—Gender and Development (GAD) Funds were either unutilized or charged for activities not aligned with the GAD platform—P47.24 million.

§          “There is no wonder that food crisis hounds the country today. The country’s prospect of achieving food self-sufficiency in the next few years may be seriously hampered if the very office of the agency involved in implementing this is not doing its job efficiently,” Glipo said. 

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