President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. joined by Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian, heads to Baseco Port in Manila on Saturday (December 14) to personally oversee the distribution of frozen mackerels to residents of Barangay 649 in Tondo.

Each of the 21,000 families were able to take home 2-kilos of frozen mackerel.

The distributed goods were sourced from the Php178.5M-worth of smuggled mackerel that were intercepted by the Bureau of Customs (BoC) last October for lacking the mandatory sanitary and phytosanitary import clearance.

In his message, the President assured the recipients that the government made the necessary arrangements to ensure that the frozen fish are safe for human consumption.

The BoC, in coordination with Department of Agriculture (DA) earlier looked into the possibility of donating the seized goods to Filipino families particularly to those affected by the recent typhoons that hit the country.

The samples were then tested by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), which declared the mackerel as having met all standards for human consumption.

The Tondo event marks the first distribution of the donated goods, anchored on the DA and DSWD memorandum of agreement (MOA) signed early Saturday morning.

This agreement formalized the turnover of the mackerel to the DSWD, intended for distribution to marginalized families across the 17 local government units (LGUs) in Metro Manila, including 1 LGU from Region 3 (Central Luzon) and 1 LGU from Region 4A (CALABARZON). (LSJ)