Lawmakers scramble for P21-B dole - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Lawmakers scramble for P21-B dole

By Leila B. Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:43:00 10/18/2010

Filed Under: Politics, State Budget & Taxes, Government Aid,Congress

MANILA, Philippines—After failing to block the expansion of the conditional cash-transfer (CCT) program, a number of lawmakers now want its P21-billion budget, described by the House minority leader as a “partisan war chest,” realigned to their favorite projects.

So a small group of members of the House of Representatives tasked with fine-tuning the budget for 2011 before its passage on final reading can expect to be bombarded with proposals to rechannel funding for the cash-transfer program to other projects.

Critics of the CCT budget still plan to submit their suggestions on how the P21 billion (up from P10 billion this year) could be better used, despite the fund remaining intact when the P1.645-trillion budget was passed on second reading in the House early on Saturday.

The small committee of lawmakers is expected to meet during the congressional break, which began over the weekend and would last until early November.

The group would be receiving committee and individual amendments, and would either reject or incorporate these into the final version of the budget that the House would pass.

Gabriela Rep. Luzviminda Ilagan, one of the militant lawmakers who circulated a manifesto opposing the CCT program for being a costly dole, said she and her party-list colleagues would submit their specific proposals to realign the P21 billion.

“Our proposal would be more specific now because we would be putting the actual amounts on the table,” Ilagan said.

She said she wanted to realign part of the CCT funds to boost the budget of state universities and colleges.

Other suggestions that have cropped up include using the funds to restore the budget of the National Food Authority to the 2010 level to allow it to buy more rice from farmers, to build farm-to-market roads and to provide for the electrification of far-flung barangays.

House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman proposed that the CCT budget be reduced to P6 billion, which he said would be enough for the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to service 1.5 million households, which he considered a more reasonable target.

Lagman said the Aquino administration’s plan to provide cash incentives to 2.3 million families next year was “overly ambitious” anyway and beyond what the DSWD could handle.

Under the CCT program, beneficiaries are supposed to ensure their children’s attendance in school and send mothers to health centers for regular checkups.

Lagman also criticized the administration for pushing for the retention of its P21-billion CCT allocation, which he describes as a “partisan war chest.”

He said the President should have left Congress alone to do its job.

“The repeated intransigent demands of President Aquino of having the CCT appropriation approved intact reveal a motive to preserve a partisan war chest even as he derogates the constitutional power of the Congress to independently appropriate public funds,” Lagman said.

The CCT has proved to be the most contentious point in the two-week budget deliberations, with debates and questions on the project taking up three days.

Ex-President and Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who started the CCT program, was a vocal critic of the project’s expansion, saying there were not enough classrooms and birthing facilities to accommodate the beneficiaries.

Arroyo said that the expanded CCT program was ambitious and untimely, and that it was irresponsible to allocate such a big amount for a project that was not yet fully prepared.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS

0 Response to "Lawmakers scramble for P21-B dole - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos"

Post a Comment