House leader files bill to abolish NTC

MANILA, Philippines — House Minority Leader and Manila Rep. Bienvenido “Benny” Abante Jr. has filed a bill seeking to abolish the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and transferring its powers and functions to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).

Abante filed on Wednesday House Bill 6701, a day after the NTC issued a cease-and-desist order to broadcast giant ABS-CBN. A copy of the bill was furnished to the media on Thursday.

“Our National Telecommunications Commission, supposedly in charge of regulating and promoting the telecommunications industry has turned out to be one of the most inept and useless agencies whose only relevance lies in being another model for sheer wastage of taxpayer money,” Abante said in his explanatory note.

“It’s failure all these years to involve sanctions against the companies poorly serving the people’s telecommunications needs is a perfect reason to abolish it already,” he added.

“But the latest act of the NTC in issuing a cease and desist order against broadcast company ABS-CBN is a slap in the face of Congress and an outright act of defiance,” the lawmaker further said.

In his privilege speech during Wednesday’s session, Abante said he has been mulling over the abolition of NTC even before it issued the order against the media giant. He stressed that “useless” agencies of the government should be eliminated.

Abante also noted that NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba, who was under oath, told the House Committee on Legislative Franchises on March 10 that the agency will issue a provisional authority to the network, which will allow it to operate pending the franchise renewal. But instead of adhering to its promise, the commission instead issued the cease and desist order.

“This brazen act of the NTC is an open defiance and insult to Congress. The NTC should be abolished and its functions and powers be transferred to the DICT where it can be better exercised and hopefully be more responsive to the news of our changing times,” he said.

The NTC ordered ABS-CBN to “cease and desist” from broadcasting on television and radio, a day after its operating franchise expired. The network stopped its broadcast operations Tuesday night in compliance with the order.

President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly threatened to block the franchise renewal of ABS-CBN, saying the network did not provide him the airtime he had paid for during the campaign period for the May 2016 presidential elections.

Despite this, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Duterte remains “neutral” on the issue, and also urged members of Congress to vote on the franchise renewal “as conscience dictates.”

EDV