The Philippine government is drawing up an emergency scheme to offer the poor household the access to the limited government-subsidized rice by issuing out "access cards", national newspaper the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported Monday.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development, through local government units, eyes to give the priority to families earning a monthly income of 4,500 (109 U.S. dollars) and below, but it is still not clear how many "access cards" will be issued.
As the world's top rice importer for 2008, the Philippines suffers a serious blow in the global food price hike which has aggravated for a month or so due to concerns of low stockpile and restrictions to food export imposed by the world's major rice producers.
The Philippines, where ten percent of the domestic rice consumption usually has to be met by importation, expected to buy not less than 2.2 million metric tons of foreign rice this year but only struggled to secure roughly 1.5 million metric tons at twice the usual costs.
The authority decided to phrase out the government-subsidized rice, sold at 18.25 pesos (0.45 U.S. dollars) a kilogram, in two weeks as middle class has been lining up with the poor to buy the limited amount of subsidized rice when prices of commercial rice soared over 50 percent over the past two months.
The family access cards will contain basic information about the beneficiaries and even bear their thumb marks and the names of the members of their households, the paper said, adding that the cards will only be issued to the head of a household.
But Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral urged the poor to be vigilant once cheap rice becomes available in their communities, saying that there could be "leakages" in the system, in which privileges would be handed to the people with connection or resources rather than the poor.
"There is always a danger in any system where the target is the poorest of the poor," she said.
Source:Xinhua
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