There is enough rice in Panay

While national dailies have recently been fanning reports of an impending rice shortage, this, in return, had sent several local residents into panic –memories of the acute rice shortage of the seventies still fresh in the memories of some of them.

But they need not resort to bulk buying of the cereal.  That, in turn, will drastically cut the stockpile of the grains and possibly lead people and traders to hoarding their palay stocks.

Actually, Panay, the principal source of rice for Negros Occidental, has more than enough supply of the prime staple. True, Negros Occidental remains a rice-deficit  area.  It produces, despite the heroic efforts by the late Governor Joseph Marañon, only 80 percent of our demand for rice.

But the province of Aklan, Capiz and Iloilo, as well as Antique have more than enough cereals to fill our needs.

This was the recent statement by Rep. Florencio Miraflores of Aklan.

Senator Manuel Roxas, who is from Capiz, reportedly received the report by Miraflores during a recent conference. Roxas said Region VI actually produces 12 percent of the country’s supply of the prime staple.

As a matter of fact, this columnist wondered whether the hullabaloo about the impending grains shortage was intended to principally spur the grains traders to increase their prices so that when time comes for the country to import more to meet the demand next year, the prices shall have risen to “acceptable” levels.

For the moment though, the National Food Authority should just monitor the movement of the rice supply across the Guimaras Strait.  And assure that none of these get hoarded to create an artificial shortage that could spur panic among local residents.

So far, there are no indications that there is a shortage of the grains in the province.  So, don’t get hypnotized by all the alarms about the impending rice shortage on a global and national scale.

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But there was disturbing news from Iloilo.  A group of 15 communist rebels reportedly torched two trucks of rice trader Maximo Tamisen in Tubungan town Sunday evening.  The trucks were loaded with grains worth about half a million pesos.  In short, police believe that the reason was Tamisen’s refusal to pay revolutionary taxes.

Just shows that the red fighters are not averse to depriving the population of rice provided they just receive their taxes.

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Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri is right.  We must let sugar remain sweet for sugar workers.  And he points out that Bukidnon already has put up 3,000 housed jointly with Gawad Kalinga in the Paglaum Village there.

Bukidnon Governor Jose Ma. Zubiri, the senator’s father, had earlier claimed only 2, 000 homes had been built for the sugar workers. But not only that.  Due to plowing back the rebates from the Philhealth Insurance System, the provincial government had built three brand-new hospitals, Migz added.

Pablo Lorenzo III, a Bukidnon Confed trustee, added that the hospitals have state-of-the-art facilities and we can be proud of them before the international community.

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People who have less in life should have more in law.  This was the echo of the late President Ramon Magsaysay’s statement that Antique Governor Sally Zaldivar-Perez stressed to the new provincial employees to give more attention to poor Antiqueños who come for help from their respective offices. Provincial Information Officer Eric Otayde said the thrust of the province is now values formation and professionalism of the provincial employees.  Perez added that she will leave a functional, professional and efficient bureaucracy.*

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