Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel, Jr., expressed hope on Sunday for more employees of the National Food Authority to resume their work, following the recent lifting of the preventive suspension by the Office of the Ombudsman of over 20 employees.

“We hope that more suspensions will be lifted in due time so that NFA operations will normalize,” said Laurel.

Amid the rice scam probe, the Ombudsman has suspended for six months without salary a total of 141 NFA employees, including administrator Roderico Bioco, assistant administrator of operations John Robert Hermano, acting department manager for operations and coordination Jonathan Yazon, and recently appointed officer in charge administrator Piolito Santos.

Currently, Laurel is temporarily taking charge of the NFA.

Ombudsman Samuel Martires said it had lifted the suspension of the 24 employees after investigators found flaws in the data provided to his office by the Department of Agriculture, which he said initially came from the NFA.

Laurel said that due to the Ombudsman's urgent request, ‘the DA immediately transmitted the list provided by the NFA without verifying its accuracy to avoid suspicion within the agency.’

“The list was given to us by NFA and we just forwarded it to the Ombudsman, believing that [it] is current and up-to-date,” the agri chief said.

“We had no chance to audit the list because of the urgency of the Ombudsman’s request. Had we verified the list with NFA management, it might have stirred suspicion as to why we are asking too much details; we were already conducting our own investigation at that time,” he added.

Reports of the NFA's allegedly selling rice buffer stock to private traders without bidding resurfaced at the end of February.

A report indicated 150,000 rice bags were claimed to be sold, of which 88,000 are still unclaimed from the agency's warehouses.

Thus, DA spokesperson Asec. Arnel De Mesa expressed the possibility of returning the money of traders who brought the illegally sold rice.