President Marcos, who heads the Department of Agriculture (DA) in a concurrent capacity, said he will initiate to include rice allowance in the salary of government workers.
In an interview with Toni Gonzaga, he said such allowance will be given in the form of rice to ensure that government workers and their families will have enough rice in their homes.
“I’m going to initiate in our, at least for the government workers, the rice allowance, nabibigay part of the sweldo (will be given as part of their salary). Ang pagbayad is in rice para nakakatiyak tayo, everybody, every family will have rice (The payment will be in the form of rice to ensure that everybody, every family will have rice),” said Marcos.
However, the chief executive did not disclose his target date to fully implement his plan.
Marcos said the rice that will be given to them will be from the government so it will cost cheaper.
“And this will be bought by the government, from the government para makamura tayo (for us to get it at a lower price) and the people don’t have to buy the market price,” he said.
“Now, we don’t want to put the rice producers out of business. On the contrary, what’s going to happen is magkakaroon ng demand kasi bibili nang marami ‘yung gobyerno, eh (there will be a demand because the government will purchase a lot of rice),” he continued.
Marcos said he will talk to corporations as he wants to institutionalize the inclusion of rice allowance in workers' pay.
“So we will institutionalize it, so at the very least mayroon tayong ganoon (we have that). This is life and death and the people are living very close to the subsistence level, and we have to pull ourselves out of that,” he said.
“They should not be at the subsistence level, they should not be spending 60, 70, 80 percent of their income on food. That’s far, far too much.”