Rice problem is top agenda in Arroyo meeting with solons
Posted April 22, 2008 Category: Politics |
MANILA, Philippines—President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and congressional leaders will meet on Tuesday to discuss the skyrocketing prices of food and fuel and identify bills that they intend to push together for immediate passage.
Cerge Remonde, Presidential Management Staff secretary, said the Palace would push for the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, affordable medicines bill and the exemption of minimum wage earners from the income tax at the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), which convenes Tuesday.
Other measures the Palace will push in the LEDAC are the Baselines Bill and the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA).
In the House of Representatives, Speaker Prospero Nograles and Palawan Rep. Abraham Mitra, chair of the committee on agriculture, Monday filed a bill providing a system of rewards for anyone who offers information leading to the arrest of rice hoarders and the confiscation of illegally kept grains.
Mitra said the whistle-blowers’ bill would seek to provide 10-percent of the seized rice to the witness whose information led to the breakthrough. He said the reward may be in cash or in kind.
Nograles and Mitra also filed a bill requiring the country’s most profitable corporations to engage in agricultural production to supply the food needs of their employees.
The bill requires firms to produce at least 600 kilos of rice per employee per year and any excess will be sold by the firms.
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