MANILA, Philippines — The newly appointed chair of the Optical Media Board (OMB) received his baptism by fire when he defended the agency’s proposed 2021 budget during a Senate hearing on his second day in office.
During Friday’s hearing, OMB chair Atty. Christian Natividad, a former mayor of Malolos City, presented the board’s P70.1 million budget for next year.
“We respectfully submit our budget and hopefully you will be generous enough to help us do our job since I’m relatively new. This is my second day in office as OMB chief,” Natividad said.
Senator Grace Poe, who presided over the hearing, congratulated the former mayor on his new post and told her colleagues to go easy on him.
“Alalahanin natin, second-day lang pala,” Poe said, which earned laughter from other senators and Natividad himself.
Senator Nancy Binay jokingly said: “Madam Chair (Poe), pahirapan natin.”
Senator Imee Marcos also jested: “Pahirapan natin.”
OMB mandate
Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon quizzed Natividad over OMB’s mandate, pointing out the board’s functions could just be a duplication of that of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Philippine National Police (PNP).
“The NBI and the PNP have the cybercrime section function. They are police agents, law enforcement as against the OMB. Cybercrimes are basically under the NBI and the PNP,” Drilon said.
“Are you not duplicating the functions of a number of agencies in the government?” the senator asked.
In response, Natividad said the OMB is in charge of regulating the manufacturing, sale, importation and exportation of optical media products.
“We are more on the [hardware] and the OMB cannot act on cyber crimes because we are more on the protection of intellectual property rights,” the OMB chair said.
Confidential funds
In presenting the OMB’s budget, Natividad said the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) only approved P70.1 million for its 2021, which is 20 million lower than the board’s original proposal of P90.6 million.
No funding was put under the OMB’s capital outlay for the purchase of two obsolete vehicles. There is also no budget allocation was also approved for the agency’s P5-million confidential funds.
Drilon asked Natividad to justify the need for confidential funds, noting that such funds are “all over the bureaucracy.”
“In this particular case, the DBM did not allow you to have confidential funds, they deleted this,” the minority leader said.
Natividad said the OMB needs confidential funds to pay assets and informants as well as to mobilize the board’s law enforcement.
“We must understand that the OMB only has 77 personnel for the whole of the country and we will be needing augmentations for that and that is just the request of the previous board to have confidential funds,” the new OMB chief said.
To end, Drilon said he raised questions on the confidential funds since it could lead to “very loose and lax disposition of public funds.”
“Every office in this bureaucracy would ask for confidential funds and intelligence funds because this is the easiest way to liquidate through a close envelope system,” he said.
“You just right in a sheet of paper how you spent the confidential funds and that is already sufficient for the purposes of the [Commission on Audit]…That is why I am wary about these confidential funds,” Drilon added.
‘Famous mayor’
Before ending the hearing for the OMB, Senator Joel Villanueva commended Natividad for facing budgetary questions in spite of him being new to the position.
“We just want to commend our famous mayor here in Bulacan for answering questions despite this being his [second] day in OMB,” Villanueva, who hails from Bulacan said.
“Pinagtripan e,” Poe then jokingly said. [ac]