DA exec named officer in charge of NFA pending rice row probe

DA exec named officer in charge of NFA pending rice row probe

An official of the Department of Agriculture (DA) will temporarily head the National Food Authority (NFA) after the Ombudsman suspended the agency’s administrator, Roderico Bioco, together with 140 other officials and employees pending its investigation of the alleged anomalous sale of the government’s rice buffer stocks.

The NFA Council unanimously appointed DA Director Larry Lacson as officer in charge (OIC) administrator “to make sure the operations of the agency runs smoothly, especially during this harvest season,” Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said in a statement on Monday.

A former director of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Lacson was named OIC deputy administrator of the NFA last week following the six-month suspensions without pay imposed by the Office of the Ombudsman.

Lacson is a member of the Philippine Food Expo Inc. and was cochair of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s agriculture and fisheries committee.

Lacson, a doctor of agricultural science, major in crop science from the De La Salle Araneta University, “brings to the NFA a unique perspective in running the day-to-day operations of the agency given his extensive experience in both the private sector and in government,” the DA said.

Grave misconduct

The Ombudsman suspended a total of 141 executives and employees of the NFA as it investigates the sale of 75,000 bags of purportedly “deteriorating or aging” milled rice at a disadvantageous price of P25 a kilo to select traders without going through a public bidding.

The charges against them included grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service.

Early this month, the Ombudsman initially suspended 139 NFA officials and employees, including Bioco, as it found “sufficient grounds” to implicate them in the questionable sale of milled rice amounting to P93.75 million.

A week later, two more officials—NFA

… Read more