Roque: Gov’t has enough money for ‘Ompong’ rehab work

The government has a big enough calamity fund to spend in rehabilitation work in areas hit by Typhoon “Ompong” (internationally known as “Mangkhut”), presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said at a media briefing on Sunday.

According to Roque, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III had also released P30 million to pay workers doing post-typhoon clearing operations.

He added that Socio-economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia, who heads the National Economic and Development Authority, also informed him that there was still a contingency fund of almost P3 billion left in the 2018 budget.

“Pero dadagdagan po ito dahil meron tayong contingency fund sa 2018 budget. So meron tayong available na hindi bababa po sa 15 billion na sapat-sapat.” he added.

[But we will be adding to this because we have a contingency fund in the 2018. So we will have a sufficient fund of not less than P15 billion.]

Roque emphasized, however, that not all of the P15 billion would be solely for rehabilitation of Ompong-devastated areas. Some of it would be set aside in anticipation of other calamities that might happen.

“Pero just to assure you na sapat-sapat po ang ating pondo sa calamity fund natin, we have 15 billion left for the year,” Roque said.

[But just to assure that we have more than enough in our calamity fund, we we have 15 billion left for the year.] /atm