NTF-Elcac: Barangay development program has no ‘ghost’ projects

National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict executive director Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr. answers questions during a Palace press briefing on October 1, 2025. — Screengrab from Presidential Communications Office/Facebook

MANILA, Philippines — The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) on Wednesday maintained that the government’s Barangay Development Program (BDP), designed to eliminate communist influence at the community level, has no “ghost” projects.

At a Palace briefing, NFT-ELCAC executive director Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr. explained the strict guidelines and monitoring taken by stakeholders to ensure that BDP projects are implemented properly.

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“They have ownership in the implementation of the project. That’s why it’s really good. We really don’t have any ghost projects,” Torres said.

“Even though we are not engineers, we have an idea on what to inspect. So that is a very good system, that everybody is involved in seeing to it that these projects are implemented properly,” he also said.

Meanwhile, Torres also expressed support for Senate Bill No. 1366, also known as the Terror Grooming and Radicalization Prevention Act, which seeks to stop radicalization and recruitment of vulnerable Filipinos to communist groups.

“The Execom expressed support to the passage of the Terror-Grooming Prevention Act because this will strengthen our preventive mechanism against radicalization, recruitment, and indoctrination, especially among the youth and vulnerable sectors of our society,” he said.

“It is a critical shield to protect vulnerable Filipinos, youth, indigenous communities, and farmers from being exploited and radicalized by terrorists,” he added.

Fight against communist insurgency

Meanwhile, Armed Forces of the Philippines vice chief of staff Lt. Gen. Jimmy Larida reported a decline in the number of communist guerrilla fronts in the country.

“Based on the parameters on the clearing, we have seen a steady decline in all the insurgency parameters,” he said.

In terms of manpower, Larida said that in 2022 there were 2,008 communist terrorist groups monitored. By the end of the first semester of 2025, the number of CTGs had gone down to 901.

“So, almost less than half remains. The Armed Forces of the Philippines play a major role in contributing to the objectives of the NTF-Elcac,” Larida said. /das