This is just so wrong.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development in Eastern Visayas admitted burying 284 sacks of rice that had been intended for relief operations but had spoiled while being stored in a warehouse, reports Lottie Salarda on InterAksyon.com.
“Police in the town of Dagami, Leyte said they learned of the buried rice only after an informant tipped them off to the disposal of the stocks in Barangay Macaalang, some two kilometers from the national highway,” she adds.
Senior Inspector Anthony Florencio, Dagami chief of police, said the barangay chairman initially denied the information. However, Forencio himself went to the area and saw where the rice, in sacks marked NFA (National Food Authority) and DSWD, had been buried in a hole measuring some 10x15x8 feet. He noted that the residents were tight-lipped when questioned about the buried rice.
When asked about the disposal of the rice, DSWD-Region 8 information officer Vina Aquino confirmed that “the 284 sacks of rice had been rotting in their warehouse, part of a 4,000-sack shipment from Cebu intended for victims of 2014’s Typhoon Ruby.
She explained that “the rice, which arrived in the third week of December last year, was meant for a food-for-work scheme in the three Samar provinces.” She stated, “Since meron pa namang stored na bigas, ‘yun na muna ang mga pinamigay namin. Continuous kasi ang ulan noon kaya siguro sa hauling at handling kaya nabasa (There was still stored rice, so we distributed that first. It rained non-stop at that time, so the new rice stocks may have gotten wet during hauling and handling).”
Aquino disclosed, though, that “it was only in March that they learned that there were sacks of rice that had begun to stink inside the warehouse and only in June that the spoiled stocks were not fit for human consumption.”
