The Cebu City Council on Tuesday asked Mayor Michael Rama to create a rice price monitoring task force that will localize the order of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to put a price cap on rice in the market.

Lawyer Rey Gealon, chair of the committee on laws of the local legislative body here, authored a resolution, asking Rama to make a counterpart effort in monitoring rice traders who are unscrupulously victimizing hapless consumers.

Rama, for his part, said he would consult Councilor Pastor Alcover Jr. before acting on the request of the Cebu City Council to form a task force to support Marcos’ effort to bring down the price of rice in the market.

“If it is necessary, then Alcover will have to work on its parameters. Alcover is the chair of the committee on agriculture. He knows about it,” Rama told reporters here.

Gealon’s resolution said the call to create a task force is to operationalize Executive Order No. 39 of Marcos which put a price ceiling for rice in the market from PHP41 for regular milled to PHP45 for well-milled and took effect on Tuesday.

Alcover said he supports Gealon’s resolution, saying it will protect the public from unscrupulous traders of the household staple.

“Generally, I’m okay with the proposal. There’s no harm if we monitor the prices of rice. Why the price of rice is skyrocketing and is there a way to bring down the prices? These are all my concerns about the current prices of rice,” Alcover told the Philippine News Agency (PNA).

Although the resolution provides no sanction as this only covers the proposal to create the task force, Gealon said Marcos’ EO needs the support of the local government to guard the consumers from the crooked rice traders.

Before leaving for Jakarta, Indonesia on Monday, Marcos said in a speech that the government has determined hoarding and smuggling to be the sole cause of inflating prices of rice. (PNA)