Suspended NFA workers: Our task just ‘ministerial’

More than a hundred National Food Authority (NFA) employees implicated in the alleged anomalous sale of the government’s rice buffer stocks on Thursday sought to reverse the six-month preventive suspension meted out to them, saying they are now left with no stable source of income.

In a 21-page motion for reconsideration filed at the Office of the Ombudsman, 108 NFA employees, mostly warehouse staff and some branch and regional managers, asked the government watchdog to rethink the suspension, arguing that they were merely assigned with “ministerial duty” and did not wield discretionary powers in the agency.

The petitioners excluded the other suspended high-ranking NFA officials led by Administrator Roderico Bioco and Assistant Administrator for Operations John Robert Hermano.

READ: NFA chief, 138 employees suspended over rice row

They comprise the majority of the 139 officials and employees ordered suspended last week to make way for a probe into the allegedly anomalous P93.75 million worth of transactions made by the NFA with G4 Rice Mill San Miguel Corp. and NBK San Pedro Rice Mill.

Errors in suspension order

According to lawyer Dino de Leon, who represents the affected NFA staff, the Ombudsman “should have acted more judiciously” before it decided to hand down the suspension order.

“The Ombudsman must remember that there are loyal government workers being unwarrantedly deprived of their only source of livelihood and of being forced to face the stigma inherently connected with suspension from office,” De Leon said in a statement read out by his co-counsel, Raphael Rayco.

Rayco, who filed the motion in person at the Ombudsman’s office, also noted that the financial security of the employees hangs in the balance due to the suspension.

“We’re not suggesting anything; we’re just asking this honorable office to kindly reconsider the list of respondents because a lot of employees were hit [by the suspension]. Right now, they have no source of livelihood,” Rayco told reporters.

“They merely do ministerial [tasks] and do not exercise discretion in releasing stocks. Upon orders from the higher management, they only release these stocks,” he added.

The lawyers also pointed out glaring “errors” in the suspension order, such as the inclusion of a deceased employee and two others who retired two years ago.

“There are many other errors in the list of respondents,” Rayco said.

For De Leon, this legal move by the NFA personnel was not only for their benefit but also for “all government employees who may fall victim to the failure of due process and the capricious exercise of the Office of the Ombudsman of its powers.”

Whistleblower

“There was no explanation as to why each one of them was suspended, save for a general claim that there is already ‘strong evidence of guilt’ against them,” he stressed, adding that this was “unfair” to the affected employees.

The indefinite suspension stemmed from the letter-complaint dated Feb. 12 filed by NFA Assistant Administrator for Operations Lemuel Pagayunan at the Office of the President.

Pagayunan alleged that Bioco and his assistant administrators acted with “manifest partiality, evident bad faith and/or gross inexcusable negligence” when they greenlighted the sale of supposedly aging 75,000 bags of milled rice to “preselected” traders at low prices without the NFA Council’s approval.

Pagayunan had claimed that Bioco issued several memorandums allowing the sale of 75,000 bags of “deteriorating or aging” NFA rice totaling P93.75 million to the traders.

He also cited a Nov. 13, 2023, memorandum supposedly issued by Hermano instructing that the stocks be rebagged in containers without the NFA markings before selling them as commercial rice.

Pagayunan alleged that “while the payment for the sale was made directly in the NFA Central Office, no other bidders or buyers were allowed to submit their bid price for the NFA stocks being sold. There is also no showing that the amount paid by G4 and NBK was the best price offered. In short, the buyers were preselected.”

In its order, the Ombudsman said it found “sufficient grounds” to suspend the NFA officials and employees as “there is strong evidence showing their guilt” for grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service.

The Department of Agriculture is conducting a separate investigation through a fact-finding committee led by Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Director Demosthenes Escoto.