Sen. Drilon questions military’s P11.5B golf course

MANILA, Philippines—Does the military need an P11.5 billion golf course for the well-being of sick and wounded soldiers?

Senator Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee, raised this question on Wednesday during its deliberations of the proposed 2012 budget of the Department of National Defense (DND).

The golf course is a 33-hectare land located at the Veterans Memorial and Medical Center in Quezon City.

But Drilon found out during the hearing that the P11.5 billion golf course is only earning about P1.6 million a year.

“For an eleven and half billion worth of property, you are realizing P1.6 million annually. Don’t you see the disproportion? I repeat, you have an asset Mr. Secretary worth P11.5 billion, you have a revenue of P1.6 million,” he told Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, who was defending the budget of his department.

“What I am pointing to is maybe you can sit down…and see how you can utilize this asset worth P11.5 billion,” he said.

“Do you need a golf course for the well-being of our sick soldier or wounded soldiers? I don’t think so,” the senator added.

Responding to Drilon’s queries, Gazmin told the committee that they were still trying to reconcile the titles of the land “because there are some discrepancies in so far as the titles of the lots.”

Drilon then suggested that the DND reviews its program to ensure that government funds would be utilized properly for the welfare of the soldiers and modernization program of the armed forces.