NFA delivers rice to 3 towns in Iloilo under FFS program
The National Food Authority-Iloilo has already delivered iron fortified rice for the Food-for-School program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in the covered municipalities.
NFA-Iloilo Assistant Manager Miguel Aguirre said they have delivered 81,382 bags of rice or equivalent to 406,910 kilograms to the program beneficiary municipalities in the north last week.
The program’s town-beneficiaries in Iloilo province are Carles, Concepcion and San Dionisio. The program is intended to mitigate hunger among the day care center children in these areas.
The total beneficiaries of the program this school year is 5,813 day care children enrolled in the 145 day care centers of the three municipalities.
Through the program, the day care children will receive a kilo of rice each in exchange of their one day school attendance.
The NFA rice delivery will meet the rice requirements of children for the next 70 days.
The Food-for-School program is being implemented here in Western Visayas for the third year with Antique, Aklan, Negros Occidental and Iloilo provinces as target areas.
The DSWD has earlier released P57 million for the purchase of iron fortified rice from the NFA for the program.
Meanwhile, the Department of Interior and Local Government and the NFA are implementing “food-for-work program” as one strategy to ensure that NFA “will not drown in excess imported rice.”
DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo said the two agencies will make sure the excess rice is still edible, adding that about two million metric tons of excess imported rice, initially reserved for food emergencies, are still in NFA warehouses.
“We have 150,000 sacks of rice with the local government units. Food-for-work is a strategy where basically disaster victims will work in community rehabilitation and reconstruction projects in exchange for food,” Robredo said.
Meanwhile, NFA Administrator Angelito Banayo said the national government also plans to allocate rice to LGUs, which could sell the commodity at P25 a kilo.
“We’re looking into food-for-work programs wherein instead of paying participants in livelihood programs, part of their compensation will be food, including rice,” Banayo said. PNA
