Ration cards next? People wait for their turn to buy their day’s requirement from an NFA rolling store in Quezon City.
***
No more P18.25 rice
in Metro markets NFA to course sales through
local gov’ts, churches
BY REGINA BENGCO
AGRICULTURE Secretary Arthur Yap yesterday
said government would pull out "in two to three weeks" the
P18.25 per kilo rice being supplied by the National Food
Authority from the public markets of Metro Manila and
concentrate its distribution in urban poor areas.
What would be made available in the public
markets is the P25 a kilo commercial grade rice that is also
being distributed by NFA, said Yap in an ambush interview after
the Cabinet meeting at the Department of Justice.
"President Arroyo wants to make sure that
food-poor vulnerable families will get the P18.25 rice," he
said.
THE Arroyo Cabinet is in favor of a
calibrated wage hike for private workers in view of rising
prices of commodities particularly rice and fuel, acting
Planning Secretary Augusto Santos said yesterday.
"There is an informal consensus that we are
supporting a wage increase," Santos said before the start of the
Cabinet meeting at the Department of Justice.
President Arroyo on Monday ordered the
convening of regional wage boards to discuss ways, including a
salary hike, of helping workers cope with the increasing prices
of oil and rice.
EXECUTIVE Secretary Eduardo Ermita was called
a liar by the Philippine UPR (Universal Periodic Review) Watch
for telling the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that the country
has an "open and vibrant democracy" and that the Arroyo
government is a "human rights defender."
Ermita, chair of the Presidential Human
Rights Committee, heads a 19-man delegation of 11 line agencies
in Geneva, Switzerland for the UNHRC’s mandatory UPR which
assesses and reviews human rights record of UN member states.
The Philippine UPR Watch said what Ermita
reported last April 13 were "outright lies" which send the
signal that "impunity will continue to be the policy of the
Arroyo regime."
