Senator JV Ejercito on Monday prodded the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Department of Agriculture to put behind bars smugglers and their protectors in government.
The senator asked why there were no agricultural smugglers jailed two years after the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Law was passed.
“I think we need to send a strong signal to the smugglers that we are not soft on them and we are determined to haul them off to jail because under Republic Act 1085, or the anti-agricultural smuggling law, in which I am one of the principal authors, large-scale agricultural smuggling is declared as an economic sabotage with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment,” he said in a statement.
Ejercito believes that ports must be tightened to prevent the entry of smuggled products and to increase efforts to clamp down on smugglers by arresting them, prosecuting them, and eventually, jailing them.
“This is even more urgent now as we expect a massive smuggling of agricultural products because of the unabated spike of prices of prime household commodities,” he said. /ee