Malacañang sees no need to realign the P19-billion anti-insurgency fund in the 2021 budget to disaster relief and COVID-19 response measures, as its beneficiaries would already include barangays affected by the typhoon.
The P19 billion is lodged in the proposed 2021 budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), a body that has drawn flak for labeling critics of the administration as communist rebels and enemies of the state.
Senators said it would be better to rechannel the funds to efforts to rebuild communities devastated by natural calamities and to improve the government’s response to the pandemic.
But presidential spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. said it was not necessary to touch the NTF-Elcac funds.
For one, the money would be for the development of barangays that used to be infested with communist rebels, Roque said.
“We know that there is a need to develop [these barangays] to remove the insurgency problem,” he said in a press briefing.
He also said the beneficiaries of the anti-insurgency funds would include areas that had been devastated by recent typhoons.