(File) Guerrillas of the New People’s Army (NPA) in formation in the Sierra Madre mountain range, located east of Manila. (Photo by Noel CELIS / AFP)
MANILA, Philippines — Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Friday defended the decision of the upper chamber to keep the P19 billion funding for the Duterte administration’s anti-insurgency task force intact under the proposed P4.5-trillion national budget for 2021.
In a statement, Sotto said conflicted and geographically isolated barangays “cleared” of insurgents need to be rehabilitated and rebuilt into developed rural communities to sustain government efforts to cut them off from communist influence.
Opposition lawmakers have been calling for the realignment of funds under the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) to augment funding for vaccines for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and to aid victims of the recent typhoons.
But under the final version of the proposed 2021 national budget, both the Senate and the House of Representatives opted to keep the budget of the NTF-ELCAC. Of the P19 billion budget of the task force, over P16 billion is allocated for the development of barangays “cleared” of insurgency.
Sotto underscored the need to sustain rural development programs that the government “has already started to carry out in these barangays.”
“Kapag natanggal mo ang insurgency sa isang area, halimbawa isang barangay or isang maliit na munisipyo o sitio, hindi natatapos ang trabaho doon. Kailangan lagyan mo iyong lugar ng mga paaralan, bigyan mo ng pagkakakitaan ang mga residente, tulungan mong makabangon muli ang mga tao,” he said.
(If you are able to rid an area of insurgency, for example, a barangay, a municipality, the work does not stop there. We need to put up places for schools, give the residents livelihood assistance, and help them recover.)
“[T]hese programs cannot be sustained if their funding is cut. So we have to make sure that the government has the budget to continue what it has started,” he added.
The Senate President then appealed to the public and to critics of the government to give the anti-insurgency campaign a chance to succeed so people in the countryside “can live normal and peaceful lives.”
Congress ratified the final version of the P4.5-trillion national budget for 2021 on Wednesday.
It will now be transmitted to President Rodrigo Duterte for his signature.