Farmers urge Aquino not to pursue abolition of PASG

MANILA, Philippines - Farmers from Benguet and the Mountain Province appealed to President Aquino not to push through with the abolition of the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group (PASG), according to the officials of the anti-smuggling agency.

PASG chief and Dangerous Drugs Board chairman Secretary Antonio Villar Jr. said “the people, especially those who benefit from the no-let up drive of PASG against smuggling in the country, really appreciated the agency’s existence.

“The Benguet farmers are only expressing their sentiment on the planned abolition of the agency,” Villar said in a statement, referring to a series of meetings he had recently with farmer groups in the region.

Early this week, agriculture stakeholders in vegetable-producing provinces called on President Aquino and Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez to shelve the planned abolition of the PASG in order to keep the vegetable industry afloat.

Farmers, traders and middlemen who rely on the production of agricultural crops as their main source of income claimed that the proposed abolition will eventually lead to the death of the vegetable industry because the influx of smuggled vegetables from China will directly compete with the locally-grown ones.

“Amid high cost of fertilizer, erratic weather patterns, low farm-gate prices and infestation of diseases, vegetable farmers here barely have anything more left to thwart their biggest challenge – smuggling,” Villar said.

In a separate statement, Katipunan ng Samahan ng mga Magsisibuyas ng Nueva Ecija (KASAMNE) president Rudy Niones said PASG was a big help for onion farmers particularly in curbing smuggling.

In the monitoring conducted by the group, the top two smuggled vegetables – carrots and potatoes — are being sold in Metro Manila markets at P20 and P40 per kilo, while those locally produced were sold at P40 to P55.

Villar said leaders of farmer’s associations in the Mountain Province stressed that the PASG was instrumental in curbing the influx of imported vegetables over the past several years and that “its abolition would result to irreparable damage to the local vegetable industry that served as the major source of income for over 250,000 individuals in the two provinces.”

“All I can say is thank you for coming out in the open and let your voices be heard,” Villar told the farmer’s association. “I know their voices will not be in vain with the new administration who promised to be a listening administration.”

“Since our creation, I have repeatedly expressed PASG is not needed if rampant smuggling is totally ended by the government, particularly by the Bureau of Customs who serve as the frontline in the fight against smuggling,” he said.