MANILA, Philippines—Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas Party-list Representative Rafael Mariano said Saturday President Benigno Aquino’s P4.23-billion rice subsidy program for farmers and fishermen was “an insult to the rice producers themselves.”
Mariano made the statement after Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said that about two million farmers, fishermen, and the poorest of the poor were in line to receive rice subsidies or employment from the government to tide them over the lean months and to help them cope with rising food prices.
“The Aquino government is exploiting the farmers’ situation in order to utilize billions of taxpayers’ money in a corruption-prone rice subsidy program similar to the fertilizer fund scam and conditional cash transfer scheme,” Mariano said.
“It is the height of irony that farmers, the rice producers themselves, are now being targeted by the government’s so-called rice subsidy. Instead of addressing demands for genuine agrarian reform and direct agricultural support to farmers, Aquino further insults the people behind the plow by giving them crumbs,” he said.
Mariano said that such a scheme only exposes the government’s failure to address hunger and poverty and inability to implement genuine reforms.
He said that the free distribution of land to farmers through genuine agrarian reform will directly help farmers feed themselves and their family.
It will also unleash the capital in the land that will serve as a strong foundation for the development of the national economy and support national industrialization, he added.
Aquino made the announcement in a Labor Day speech in Malacañang on May 1.
The President said the subsidy was part of his administration’s effort to address the ever-increasing prices of fuel and food.