Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Lawmakers will continue to prioritize human resource development and environment protection when the Congress reconvenes on May 7, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. assured in a statement.
Lawmakers would “never deviate from reinvigorating national policies on human development, promoting investments and protecting the environment” despite ongoing focus on other reforms, said Belmonte.
“Directly and indirectly, Congress is determined to propose more new statutes or update existing laws to promote human development, particularly for the country’s labor force,” he said, pointing out that the House has transmitted to the Senate 179 bills of national scope and 446 local measures of equal importance.
They will also be working for the passage of nine national and 58 local bills this May.
Lined up for final reading are:
* HB 6050 which seeks to introduce an alternative delivery mode for secondary education by establishing rural farm schools;
* HB 6048 which aims to provide universal health care services to all Filipinos and amend Republic Act 7875 or the National Health Insurance Act of 1995;
* HB 6022 which will rationalize taxes on International Air Carriers and amend some provisions in the National Internal Revenue code of 1997;
* HB 6023 which will prevent and control pollution from ships, penalizing violators;
* HB 6040 which seeks a three-year validity period for the license to exercise the security profession, amending R.A. 5487 or the Private Security Agency Law; and
* HB 6044 which will institute reforms in real property valuation and assessment in the Philippines, reorganizing the Bureau of Local government finance.
Lawmakers will also be looking into local bills, including upgrading and modernizing of the J.R. Borja City Memorial Hospital as an extension hospital of the Northern Mindanao Medical Center in Cagayan de Oro City; establishing national high schools; granting franchises to broadcast entities in Luzon as well as franchises for constructing and operating a distribution system for electric power in Nueva Ecija; establishing multi-purpose fish breeding farms and hatcheries in Surigao del Sur and in Cagayan (Luzon), a fish port and cold storage facility in Cagayan and Pangasinan, and a fisheries research center, also in Cagayan.
He said that HB 3861 which seeks to develop entrepreneurship skills among government employees; HB 209 which will beef up adult education programs for workers and employees and amend the Labor Code of the Philippines; HB 4255 which will strengthen the ladderized interface between technical-vocational education and training and higher education; and HB 4225 which seeks the participation of civil society organizations in the formulation of national, regional and local development plans were measures awaiting Senate approval.
Belmonte expressed hope that such measures could be passed as they meant “benefits for the workers and their families, jobs and income for their respective areas.”