Hot rice to be auctioned next week

THE Bureau of Customs will fast-track the public auction of thousands of illegally imported sacks of rice that the agency seized early this year.

Deputy Customs Commissioner Danilo Lim said the auction will be held “anytime next week”.

“That’s why we need to conduct the public auction as soon as possible because the longer it takes, it only leads to problem like this,” he said.

Lim was referring to an incident Friday in which 100 sacks of rice from eight container vans valued at P130,000 were pilfered. The vans were among the 1,169 vans containing around 600,000 sacks of rice from Vietnam that were seized from March 22 to April 3.

Lim said it was difficult to secure the seized contraband as there is no warehouse in Cebu that is big enough to store all the seized rice.The holding area of the Bureau of Customs can only accommodate 50 container vans.

He said the BoC is already investigating the incident.

Cebu District Collector Edward dela Cuesta said he has ordered a “100 percent counting of containers”.

“I already called the Oriental Port and Allied Services Corporation (Opascor) and the Cebu International Port (CIP) to conduct a 100 percent of counting of containers,” Dela Cuesta said.

He also dispelled rumors that over 166 vans stored in the Cebu International Port were pilfered. A container van is said to contain an estimated 500 sacks.

“After we received the information, I organized a team with our examiner and from the intelligence to check the vans that were found open,” he said.

Dela Cuesta said they have tightened security in both entrance and exit points around the BoC including the holding area where the pilferage occurred. /Correspondent Michelle Joy L. Padayhag