ACTING on complaints that small exporters of Cavendish banana have been allegedly milked of P8,000 per shipping container, or P40,000 per transaction, by several Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) quarantine officials for years now, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol has relieved a quarantine officer in Davao City.
The relieved officer was accused of “demanding grease money from exporters of Cavendish banana.”
Piñol bared this in his post on Facebook on Sunday morning.
“After I received complaints from small exporters of Cavendish banana that the BPI quarantine officer in Sasa Port, Andres Alemania, and some of his people, were demanding ‘fees’ for every container van, I immediately directed BPI Acting Director Vivencio Mamaril to issue a relief order,” Piñol said.
He vowed that on Monday, July 18, he would issue another directive to Mamaril “to relieve the whole BPI Quarantine Service staff in Sasa Port down to the janitor and replace them with a fresh group of quarantine officers.”
He added: “There will be due process. This week I will dispatch graft investigators belonging to a new unit I organized in the Department of Agriculture to proceed to the Sasa Port in Davao City to validate the charges.”
“They will interview the over 200 Cavendish banana exporters who have reportedly been paying the ‘special fees’ to the BPI Quarantine Office for so many years now,” he said. “The going rate, according to sources I talked with, is P8,000 per container, or P40,000 per exporter per transaction.”
There are over 200 small banana exporters in the Davao region, besides the big players, like Dole Philippines, Sumifru, Tadeco and Uni-Frutti.
“I can just imagine how much these people, granting that the charges are true, have been raking in all these years,” he said. “Lifestyle check will also be conducted on the said officials and, if the charges are validated, I will officially ask the Office of the Ombudsman to start an official investigation and recommend the filing of graft charges.”
With a concluding hashtag #Changeishere!, Piñol warned: “President Duterte’s vow to rid the government of corrupt officials is not just cheap talk. It will be done. Learn, adapt, adjust or get fired.”