Vice President Sara Duterte honor the public and private sector partners of the Office of the Vice President on Monday, June 5, 2023. (Photo from her Facebook page)
MANILA, Philippines — The budget that Congress gave to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) in 2023 wasn’t wasted but put into various programs that benefited a lot of Filipinos, Vice President Sara Duterte said on Monday during her, “Pasidungog,” her annual recognition and awards program.
“Pasidungog” is a Cebuano term that means “to honor publicly.”
“Let me take this opportunity to thank the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for supporting the OVP’s implementation of the expanded Medical Assistance Program and Burial Assistance Program,” Duterte said.
“To the honorable members of Congress, who believed in our genuine desire to serve the people — thank you very much. The budget that you gave the OVP was not wasted. We have returned it to Filipinos through our programs.”
In the proposed 2023 General Appropriations Act, the executive branch allocated P2.3 billion for the OVP — which critics said was unprecedented given that Duterte’s predecessor, Leni Robredo, was able to steer the office to a good performance despite meager allocations.
Members of the Makabayan bloc noted during the budget deliberations that the OVP during Robredo’s last year in office only got P702 million — which means that the current OVP’s allocation increased by over three times.
The Makabayan bloc also referred to the budget as “vice presidential pork” because the budget included P500 million in confidential funds which they believe should only be given to defense and intelligence agencies.
The OVP explained that good governance and confidential funds would be used for social services, as well as peace and order and national security programs.
During the program — which was intended to thank OVP’s public and private sector partners who helped the agency’s projects — Duterte laid down figures to support her claim that the money has been used properly.
“This day, our countrymen are flocking to our satellite offices and extension offices seeking help for the hospitalization of their loved ones. The lines in this service are always long,” Duterte said in Filipino.
“For the Medical Assistance Program alone, we served 22,970 Filipinos and spent more than 236 Million Pesos from June last year to April this year.
“We forged partnerships with several hospitals and other service providers, such as pharmacies, to successfully implement these social services nationwide […] The Burial Assistance Program is another social service that provides relief to families without the financial capacity to bury their dead loved ones. As of April this year, the program has assisted 6,175 families — utilizing 30,875,000 pesos.”
She also added that the OVP had started several projects to address the malnutrition of children, especially those in the countryside.
“Right now, the Kalusugan Food Trucks are being utilized to implement another OVP special project — the PanSarap. PanSarap is a supplemental nutrition intervention that addresses the incidence of malnutrition among schoolchildren. Various studies have established a correlation between malnutrition and effective learning,” she said.
“Learning becomes doubly challenging for children with poor nutrition. We have started to roll out the PanSarap project, bringing it to the Nuro Central Elementary School in the town of Upi in Maguindanao. Over 1000 undernourished school learners will be given enhanced PanSarap buns for 120 days. It is also currently being implemented at Tamugan Elementary School in Davao City, with 733 learners as beneficiaries.”