DSWD to pay P6.6M to expedite rice release

The Department of Social Welfare and Development  (DSWD) will pay the  P6.6 million demurrage fee to expedite the release of over 90,000 sacks of rice  donated by Algeria for the typhoon victims. The shipment was part of a rice shipment being held at the Cebu International Port.

“We need to pay since we already exceeded the number of days for demurrage  given by the cargo companies,” Marcial  Fernandez, assistant regional director of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-7)  told Cebu Daily News.

He added the DSWD central office disbursed an initial P10 million to cover the 91,520 of the total 126,920 sacks of rice donated by Algeria.

Yangming Marine Transport Corp. transported 63 container vans and gave the consignee, the DSWD-7, 30 days demurrage-free while the APL Co. Ltd transported the rest of the container vans and gave 21 days demurrage-free.

Import permits

Fernandez said the rice donations arrived in seven shipments on Jan. 2, 9, 29, 23, 24, 30 and February 13. The cost of the demurrage per day for the Yangming Marine Transport is P500 per container while APL Co. Ltd is P1,400 per van per day.

The container vans were not immediately released due to lack of import permits from the National Food Authority (NFA) which takes about a month to process.

Fernandez said demurrage and other fees reached P14 million and they’re awaiting another P4 million from their central office.

The P6.6 million demurrage fee for the two companies is included in the P14 million breakdown of expenses.

Other expenses include P180,000 for the release charge, P1.2 million for tracking, P202,000 for the unloading of the goods using heavy equipment and P5.5 million for the shipment of goods from Cebu to Tacloban.

The Oriental Port and and Allied Services Corp. (Opascor) is also charging P10,000 to the regional DSWD office for every container of other donations like clothes which has to be opened and inspected as required by law.