DTI & DA should step up amid rising prices

Top officials from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) should not only rely on the publication of copies of Standard Retail Prices (SRP) in markets amid the recent exorbitant increases in prices of basic food items but they rather also enforce the list and ran after food cartels, hoarders, and profiteering middlemen.

Publications of SRP list and a recent couple of photo ops in a few wet and dry markets in Metro Manila for the DA and DTI officers does not address the extraordinary increases of basic food commodities unduly imposed on the poor consumers.

The DA and DTI should rather mobilize all regional officers and men and do a concerted nationwide enforcement of the SRP list. Kung kinakailangan ang police assistance bakit hindi gawin?

Media publicity stunts and publications of SRP are no longer observed by retailers and not respected by traders. Instead, the DA and the DTI officials will be more relevant to the public if they bring the action to the city or municipal level where hoarders, profiteers and middlemen thrives in imposing high prices on consumers at will. 

Affected by exorbitant prices of basic commodities are the low-income workers, the daily-paid and pieceworks workers and the vulnerable unemployed and underemployed workers displaced by thw pandemic economic and health crisis.