We condemn the impending lay-off of around 800 NFA employees from among the 420,000 civil servants due to the Executive Order 366 (EO 366), or the Rationalization Plan (Rat Plan),  is implemented. We are enraged how the government is about to take a drastic step just months after the rice crisis that will not only endanger the livelihood of its employees but will also render weak and inutile a government agency mandated to ensure the country’s rice supply and the steady growth of the grains industry.

The government's solution to augment the country's rice supply through importation instead of strengthening our capability to produce rice is unsustainable. This danger of having an import-oriented rice industry was clearly exposed in the recent rice crisis. Even as we barely managed to survive the lack of our primary staple, significant parts of the population remain suffering from hunger. More than four million households found themselves involuntary hungry in the last few months of 2008 according to an SWS survey.

Yet the government has no intention of reversing the current direction of the rice industry. It is making matters worse with its plan to lay-off many NFA employees and the abolition of some of the agency's important departments.

As an organization of scientists, engineers, and technologists, we are dismayed that the Research and Development and Extension of the NFA shall be included in the mass lay-off  due to EO 366's basis of "redundancy". These researchers and scientists are very qualified and are performing vital research and development in our rice production, post-harvest, storage and quality.

We could not comprehend how the NFA "rationalizes" this so-called redundancy since we are still a country with a backward agriculture. The Rationalization Plan will cause the abolition of six important departments of NFA. and will cause the termination of hundreds of regular permanent rank-and-file workers out of the 1,957 plantilla positions to be abolished.

In pushing for the removal of the technical and research division of our food agency, this current government has abandoned any plans to genuinely develop our rice industry. It has shown that it does not take care of its own agricultural scientists much as it does not care about securing food for our people.  We join the call of the employees of the NFA and other government agencies to scrap the Rationalization Plan.