Intended for Samar provinces: Buried bags of rotten rice dug up

DAGAMI, LEYTE, Philippines – The local police over the weekend dug up sacks of rotten rice and goods, with “NFA” and “DSWD” markings, dumped and buried in an 8-foot deep, and a 10-foot wide and 15-foot length area at Barangay Macaalang of this town.

Chief Inspector Anthony Florencio, acting chief of the Dagami Police, said a concerned citizen alerted the police about an “activity last Friday involving the disposal of bags of NFA rice, believed to be from the DSWD, into an excavated hole.”

While the police, after the unearthing of the NFA rice, conducted an investigation on the discovery, the DSWD-8 issued a statement clarifying the matter to The Freeman yesterday.

Vina Aquino, information officer of DSWD-8, said a total of 284 sacks of rice were buried in the area after these got spoiled in the agency’s warehouse in Tacloban City.

Aquino said the rice were intended for the Food for Work program for typhoon Ruby victims in the three provinces of Samar island, while helping in the rehabilitation works in their respective areas.

“These sacks of NFA rice were part of the 3,704 sacks of donated rice stored at the DSWD hub in Cebu City and then shipped by the Navy to Tacloban via Ormoc City in the third week of December last year,” said Aquino,

“While in transit, some of the rice got wet because it was raining that time, and this could have been the reason why several of the rice got spoiled sooner,” she said.

Most of the bags of rice were already disposed to beneficiaries in Samar island, she said, although the distribution was not really that fast because the DSWD-8 personnel had to repack the rice in 3-kilo or 6-kilo bags before transporting this to the intended provinces.

“The distribution was done on a daily basis to beneficiaries, who participated in the program, but we in the DSWD-8 spent so much time in sorting out and repacking the rice,” she said.

The DSWD-8 had to pull out from the Tacloban warehouse those that were already rotten and thus unfit for human consumption. “We have to dump and buried these,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Food for Work program still continues, and the DSWD-8 has been working on the repacking of the remaining rice for distribution to beneficiaries in Samar, said Aquino. (FREEMAN)