‘1,792 NFA employees may lose jobs’

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – Up to 1,792 National Food Authority (NFA) employees stand to lose their jobs without any assurance of benefits in the pending “restructuring” of the agency, the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) said yesterday.

“The restructuring was approved this month by the Governance Commission for Government-Owned or Controlled Corporations as part of implementing the Rice Liberalization Law passed in February last year. They call it restructuring or downsizing. But for agricultural workers, we call it job massacre and we condemn it in the highest terms possible,” the UMA statement read.

UMA chairman Antonio Flores said the plan “is very callous since it does not even have a provision for sourcing the funds to ensure that the job massacre victims would be paid their separation benefits and be paid on time.”  

“Under the GCG’s restructuring plan, the NFA Council, through its administrator, has yet to look for fund sources to implement the downsizing. This puts in limbo the separation benefits of the 1,792 NFA employees,” he noted.

Flores claimed that the NFA is cash-strapped and debt-ridden.

“Where will they get the funds to pay for the separation benefits of the ‘downsized employees’? Are they going to source the separation benefits from the palay procurement funds of the NFA, thereby taking away from our already beleaguered farmers in order to give something to NFA employees?” he asked.