Deputy Minority Floor Leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo today urged that all pork barrel funds of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and legislators should be turned over towards relief and rehabilitation programs. He also said that the same should also apply to all departments and agencies under the executive and their respective discretionary funds.
“Pres. Arroyo has gone on record as saying that she will do her best to help the victims of Ondoy and Pepeng, bar none. She should now put meat into her words and devote her office's pork barrel and other discretionary funds towards disaster response,” Ocampo said.
He also appealed to colleagues in the legislature to do the same. Each congressman receives P70 million in Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) a year, while each senator gets P200 million.
“Since lawmakers often justify accepting and utilizing their pork barrel as means to implement infrastructure projects in their respective regions, it would be a significant and compassionate gesture if lawmakers would volunteer all their 2010 and 2011 PDAF towards a national fund for disaster relief and rehabilitation. It goes without saying that it will take a comprehensive collective effort on the part of all the country’s leaders to ensure that the devastated areas, affected communities and industries make a recovery,” Ocampo said.
Ocampo said that spending for the controversial pork barrel or PDAF in 2008 exceeded the budget by almost P2 billion, while that of the calamity fund was above the budget by about P1.3 billion. These were the initial findings of the Commission on Audit (CoA) on the implementation of the 2008 budget presented to select members of the House of Representatives in a briefing last August. In the same CoA document, appropriations for PDAF-Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses also totaled P6.895 billion or some P2 billion above the appropriated amount of P4.98 billion.
“Let it not be said that we have not learned our lesson from these painful experiences. The government has already been caught flat-footed by Ondoy and Pepeng. This should not be allowed to happen again. All funds – be it locally sourced or those in the form of international humanitarian aid – should be utilized wisely to put together a scientific and modern disaster response program and an economic development plan in the wake of the damage wrought by the typhoons,’ he said. #
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