Senate to focus on new agenda

Senate President Vicente Sotto III. FILE PHOTO / Henzberg Austria of Senate PRIB

MANILA, Philippines — In the next few months, the Senate will focus on making the situation, amid the pandemic, better for all Filipinos.

Aside from providing stimulus funds and giving the President more powers, the new Senate agenda would focus on measures to address the massive changes in the country’s digital landscape, education, public transportation, business environment and the arts, according to Senate President Vicente Sotto III.

Sotto opened the second regular session on Monday with a “sense of urgency and purpose,” with majority of his colleagues present in the plenary in masks and with acrylic dividers between them to prevent transmission of the coronavirus.

In the months ahead, the Senate would focus on making people’s lives better, Sotto said.

“I speak for all the senators when I say that for the second regular session, your legislators will be proposing laws that will answer the question: How can we make this situation better for every Filipino?” Sotto said in his speech.

“Today, I give my solemn pledge that the Senate will fight for and in behalf of the Filipino people,” he added.

P140-B stimulus fund

According to Sotto, the Bayanihan 2 bill, which proposes a P140-billion stimulus fund and additional powers for the President, would be approved on third reading.

The Senate’s agenda would also focus on the digital landscape to improve connectivity in the country as the movement restrictions brought by the pandemic has forced many to do their transactions online.

Measures will also deal with distance learning to ensure that the younger generation could continue their education.

“We must support programs that will help the education sector migrate to more plausible learning platforms,” he said.

It will also work on bills to improve the public transport system, also curtailed by the pandemic.

“In order to help revive our economy, it is imperative to have a safe, efficient and dependable public transport system that will ferry workers so that industries may again produce goods and services; and people can resume earning incomes to spend,” he said.

New measures would also allow new ventures to flourish and boost entrepreneurs by reassessing tariffs to ease business burdens, he said.

Support the arts

It was also important to support the arts, Sotto said, himself a songwriter and TV host. “We must rebuild our nation in both body and soul. Great civilizations before us endured not only because they had material wealth, but because they lived a life nurtured by writers and artists,” he said.

“In this crisis, we need writers, poets and creators to help us make sense of what is happening in the world,” he added.

“For what good will we be if we survive all this, but lose our soul? It is my hope that the Senate help this nation emerge from the chaos of the pandemic with its mind and heart intact,” he said.

But even with these bills on their plate, he said the Senate would continue its oversight function and is set to hold inquiries on corruption allegations within the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., and on the deaths of high-profile inmates in the New Bilibid Prison.

Sotto called for cooperation for better chances of surviving the crisis.