By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas & Cai U. Ordinario
TENURED employees of the National Food Authority (NFA) will soon file a petition before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the new rice trade liberalization law, which could cause thousands of NFA workers to lose their jobs.
NFA Employees Association (NFAEA) Central Office President Maximo M. Torda told the BusinessMirror the group will file the petition by May.
Torda said the NFAEA will question the legislative history of the law, which started at first as a rice tariffication bill. The bill sought to convert the country’s quantitative restriction (QR) on rice imports into ordinary customs duties.
He said the initial bill had evolved into a measure that affected government safeguards against imports and included the deregulation of the food agency.
“The rice trade liberalization law eventually removed all the effective safeguard measures for controlling and supervising the country’s food security,” Torda said in an interview.
“From the simple objective of removing the QR, it evolved into an encompassing law which resulted in major changes, such as the revamp and reorganization of the NFA that would now lead to thousands of layoffs,” he added.
Torda said NFAEA’s Supreme Court case is only part of a series of legal challenges that will be made by various rice-industry stakeholders against the new law in the coming weeks.
“Our petitions would have different bases and reasons. We want to be apolitical,” Torda said. “Our petition is more of protecting our agency and our employees. We want to protect what is left of the NFA, with our security of tenure being only secondary.”
Election ban
Torda said that no NFA employee could be displaced until June due to the election ban. This, he said, will give the NFA more time to discuss the reorganization and restructuring of the grains agency to fulfill its new mandate under the new law.
“Things are still complicated. There are still a lot of gray areas even in the signed implementing rules and regulations [IRR], particularly the reorganization of the NFA,” he said.
Torda cited the commissioning of an independent study that would outline the NFA’s buffer-stocking role under the new trade regime as the basis for the agency’s reorganization.
This, he said, would allow the NFA to determine how many workers will be displaced. “We think that study would be the basis of a concrete plan for the NFA reorganization. It’s just sad that [the national government] is rushing things and wants to railroad everything.”
Torda said some 1,000 employees will be affected by the NFA reorganization mandated by the new law, higher than the initial estimate of 400 made by government officials.
The 400 NFA employees that may be displaced are from the industry services department and security services and investigation department, which are directly involved in the NFA’s previous regulatory functions of licensing importers and retailers and monitoring the country’s rice trade.
‘Not true’
The National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said the reorganization of the NFA will affect less than 500 employees.
Neda Regional Development Office Assistant Secretary Mercedita A. Sombilla told the BusinessMirror these employees are involved in the importation and licensing functions of the NFA.
The importation and licensing function of the NFA has been repealed under Republic Act 11203. Under the new law, the NFA’s functions have been limited to buffer stocking.
“Only 400 plus employees will be affected, those involved in licensing and importation as these are the only functions that were changed in the new law,” Sombilla said. “Their number will not even reach 500,” she added, disputing claims by NFA employees that over a thousand will be affected by the reorganization.
Sombilla said the number was based on a survey of employees who wanted to avail themselves of the “retirement package” to be offered by the government. This means the number includes both the affected employees and those who want to leave NFA. The survey was done prior to the signing of the law’s IRR.
Under the IRR, NFA employees will receive up to 1.5 times their monthly basic salaries (MBS), depending on their years of service.
Initially, Sombilla said this was not the computation offered by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). She said determining the compensation package was one of the reasons the IRR was not signed immediately after the law was passed.
“I went to DBM to haggle. I asked if they can add to the compensation package since the NFA is considered a state-owned corporation. So finally, after four to five days that the DOF [Department of Finance], Treasury and DBM debated, they finally came up with a rate which is 1.25 and 1.5,” Sombilla said.
Under Rule 3.4.1.2, the package of employees who are in their first 20 years of service will be equivalent to their MBS multiplied by their years of service.
However, those who have reached 20 years and one day to 30 years of employment will receive a package that is equivalent to 1.25 times their MBS for every year of service.
Those who stayed longer at 30 years and one day or more, will receive 1.5 times their MBS for every year or service.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes