MANILA, Philippines?The government is studying a proposal for the National Food Authority to distribute rice to poor households instead of leaving it to rot in warehouses, Malacañang said yesterday.

NFA Administrator Lito Banayo was now studying the condition and quality of rice in warehouses in view of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas' proposal for NFA to give away rice to the poor, Secretary Edwin Lacierda said.

"Certainly that's a good suggestion, but that will be studied by the NFA administrator. Even Secretary Dinky Soliman should be consulted,'' the presidential spokesperson told reporters.

The KMP has urged President Benigno Aquino III to distribute surplus rice to the more than 4 million Filipinos who he said in Monday's State of the Nation Address is not eating three meals a day.

Echoing Mr. Aquino, the NFA had admitted that there was an over-importation of rice by the previous administration even for the current year and that shipments are arriving in the country in spite of the glut.

The agency has yet to issue an estimate of the volume of rice rotting in warehouses as Mr. Aquino disclosed in his SONA.

Soliman proposed that the rice be used for the Department of Social Welfare and Development's poverty reduction program.

The commodity could benefit the DSWD's supplemental feeding program, which entails cooking of food, and food-for-school program, which entails giving a away a kilo of rice for each day of attendance for pupils in daycare centers and grade school, she said.

Or, it could be used in a food for work program for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, where rice will be given for each day that they work to rebuild their homes or repair roads and bridges in the region, the Secretary said.

There are 16,000 families left in evacuation centers nearly two years after secessionist rebels attacked villages and residents in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte in protest of the scuttling of the deal to expand the Bangsamoro territory, called the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain or MOA-AD.

"We will give them rice for the days that they work,'' she said in an interview by phone.

Soliman said she would meet with Banayo and Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala to discuss her proposal.

"There are different modes of using it, but definitely it should be used for poverty reduction,'' she said.

The food-for-school program is being reviewed by the administration because of some leakages. A 2007 Commission on Audit report showed many teachers and parents shelling out money to distribute packs of NFA rice.

There had been some ?anecdotal evidence? showing that beneficiary day care and elementary schools were not getting the right amount of supply because some sacks were lost along the way, officials said.