House bill sets penalty for blocking access to food during calamities

By: 11 years ago

Akbayan party-list representative Walden Bello. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines – A bill was filed at the House of Representatives penalizing any person blocking access to food during calamities or war.

This is one of the penal provisions in the Right to Adequate Food Framework bill filed on Monday by Akbayan Representatives Ibarra Gutierrez and Walden Bello, Dinagat Island Rep. Kaka Bag-ao, and Quezon City 6th district Rep. Jose Christoper Belmonte.

The proposed law seeks to make right to adequate food a government priority.

The bill was filed just as reports of looting by survivors on business establishments prompted police response in provinces hit by Super Typhoon “Yolanda” during the early weeks of slow humanitarian aid.

Owners of businesses in Yolanda hit areas at times resorted to wielding a gun to stave away hungry survivors.

The penalty of prision mayor or minimum six to maximum 12 years “will be imposed on any public or private actor, who deliberately starves or denies access to food to any particular individual or group,” the bill read.

Prohibited acts include: deliberate food blockade; refusal to implement a food-related program; discrimination in implementing a food-related program; negligence in implementing food-related programs, resulting in death;

Obstructing access to food, theft, corruption or black marketeering of food being given as humanitarian aid, as well as distribution of expired, or unsafe food at a school feeding program or other feeding program, in times of calamity or war; and contamination of food or water sources, through mining activities, aerial spraying of plantations, or any other similar means.

The bill also seeks to create the Commission on Right to Adequate Food under the Commission on Human Rights.

“Every person has a right to be free from hunger,” the bill read.