THE government’s admission this week that it is powerless to curb the massive importation of pork and chicken that have been crippling the local livestock industry beggars belief.
Yet this is exactly what the director of the Bureau of Animal Industry told hog raisers in a letter that described meat imports as “a decades-long problem,” and that contrary to what local growers were saying, were not affecting the retail price of pork.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala chimed in that the bureau lacked the “statutory authority to curb unfair market and trade practices.” He added that the government had yet to draw up plans on how to stop the selling of smuggled agricultural products— including meat—in the local markets.
Taken together, the statements are a disturbing indictment indeed of an administration that can—or will—do nothing to help its people.
The fact that smuggling is a decades-long problem is no excuse for the government to throw up its hands in helplessness or shrug its shoulders in indifference. Other crimes, too, have been around for decades, but we hardly expect our leaders to say they are helpless to stop them.
But in the last two years, this government has not even come up with a plan to stop the selling of smuggled meat in the markets, much less taken action against it, if we are to believe Secretary Alcala.
Customs Commissioner Ruffino Rozzano Biazon, in the recently concluded national convention of hog growers, admitted that crooked bureau personnel must have conspired with Agriculture officials to enable importers to bring choice meat cuts into the country as offal, and pay a low 5-percent tariff when they should be paying 30 percent. But outside the issuing of press releases, Biazon has done nothing to stop this practice—not even in his own home turf.
Worse, Biazon had the temerity to complain that the local hog industry had not done its part because it had not assigned experts to help Customs deal with this kind of smuggling. Is the Customs commissioner suggesting that it is now the job of private companies to monitor smuggling and import violations? The last time we looked, that was the job of the Bureau of Customs.
President Benigno Aquino III has famously said that we, the people, are his boss—and this is true in one important way: we pay the taxes that pay for his salary. We also pay for the salaries of his subordinates—including Alcala and Biazon.
In the private sector, when an employee draws a salary and does nothing for two years, he is deadwood and a candidate for firing. The government could benefit from the same policy—but we might end up firing the President, too.
(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on /2012/April/27) source
