DA Skirts National Policy on Free Movement of Food

Click the link for a copy of the Implementation Procedure.

The DA has to reexamine its Implementation Procedure for Food Lane Accreditation that its office, through its undersecretary for operations, Engr. Ariel T. Cayanan, issued on March 16, 2020. 

Strangely, the issuance prescribes that the validity of the food lane accreditation shall be two (2) years. This gives the impression that the national government believes that this crisis is going to last two years. While we don’t dismiss the possibility of a protracted battle with COVID-19, given that even the much advanced economies like Italy and Spain struggle to rein in its spread, one month is way shorter than two years. Moreover, it has to be made in an official pronouncement by President Duterte, or through his alter ego, the secretary of the Department of Health, Franciso Duque III, then eventually reduced to a policy through the IATF.

But it’s not the case here. This two-year period just came out of thin air. If this accreditation will remain valid after the community quarantine will have been lifted, say, as it stands now, on April 13, 2020, then the grantee will continue to enjoy the privileges under it even after the emergency that provided the basis for its issuance has passed. This reeks of anomaly, for no one would extend privileges beyond what is intended, for nothing.

In fact, this is not the only problem. The more sinister part of this issuance, which I wrote about in yesterday’s article, is that it imposes requirements that have no basis, if we consider the underlying concerns that motivated the creation of this food lane. 

Up to now, and until this ill-advised issuance is implemented, the only change that has been introduced in how deliveries of foods and their raw materials are handled is that checkpoint personnel must determine that the delivery content is, indeed, foods, or their raw materials accompanied by an inventory, or if delivery has already been made, a delivery receipt; that checkpoint personnel must determine whether the number of delivery crew or contingent is at its leanest, or just enough to carry out the task; and most importantly, that checkpoint personnel must determine that the delivery crew or contingent pass the thermal scan, to ensure that we don’t allow suspected cases to be moving around. 

Bearing in mind that the main objective of the quarantine is to restrict or limit the movement of people, based on scientific finding that COVID-19 transmits through droplets, or people’s close contact.  The only impetus for establishing this green lane is the observation that delivery vehicles containing foods and goods have stalled in checkpoints, as they co-mingle with the rest of queuing vehicles. Thus, consistent with the national policy, which the national government, through its national officials including the president, have pronounced ad nauseam, that is, movement of foods, and goods, and cargoes in general, must remain unhampered and unimpeded, all the government needs to do is create a special checkpoint lane for foods, and their raw materials—precisely this food lane, without the unreasonably onerous requirements.

This “unhampered movement” policy is borne out of plain common sense. The government knows that if it chokes the flow of foods or their raw materials, food shortage and price spikes will ensue, bringing in chaos, and exacerbating our predicament.

Instead, the DA issued a much-detached issuance, fashioned as an implementation procedure, imposing a whole gamut of requirements, which has nothing to do with restricting or limiting the movement of people. In what seems to be a surreptitiously crafted procedure, the DA, in this wicked issuance, requires that applicants, to be eligible, have to be registered with DTI, SEC, CDA, or DOLE; that an applicant must have a valid business permit; that an applicant present its delivery vehicle’s CR/OR; that an applicant must have no complaint filed against it. 

How much of the country’s farmers are registered with SEC, DTI, CDA, or DOLE, or have business permits, or have their own vehicles? And what has a complaint against an applicant to do with its ability to deliver foods? This subversive policy will only exclude the subsistence farmers, those in Benguet and Nueva Ecija, among others, whom the government have been publicly promising to help sell their products directly to their market here in Metro Manila, in favor of the bigger middlemen, who are likely to be the ones able to satisfy the DA accreditation requirements. This will make the government’s promise of levelling the playing field, nothing more than just another lip service. 

Let us take note that all these requirements did not exist before COVID-19, so under what basis do these exist now, where the national policy, spawned by the need to respond to the crisis, is to keep the movement of goods unhampered and unimpeded—keep it the way it was before the crisis? Obviously, no basis exists. Why it is there, is something only the DA can explain.

The irony of it all is that behind this audacity, the DA has no authority to demand any of the requirements it has imposed on the prospective applicants, as these are out of its jurisdiction. 

The DA needs reminding that even overzeal, if it be the motivation, cannot be made an excuse for a subordinate department to disobey a superior order, or override a national policy, consequently undermining the office of the president. Overzeal cannot make it immune from censure, even prosecution. The DA, no matter how noble its intention,  cannot supplant its own wisdom over that of the nation’s, through the IATF, and ultimately the office of the president. 

The President must call the DA out on this sneaky issuance, and order it to rewrite its procedure in a way that conforms with the national policy.