Some Senate leaders have proposed realigning pork barrel funds to relief and rehabilitation efforts in disaster-stricken areas like Western Visayas, Central Luzon and Zamboanga City.
“We want to use some of the savings and, if possible, part of the pork barrel for areas hit by natural and man-made calamities like Nueva Ecija, Bulacan, Bohol, Cebu and Zamboanga,” Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters after a speaking engagement at the University of the Philippines.
Senate President Pro Tempre Ralph Recto also proposed that the Senate’s portion of the unspent Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) should all be turned over to the affected areas—something like a “no strings attached waiver of funds.”
The Department of Budget and Management has said that the unused PDAF at the time the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on its disbursement stood at more than P12 billion. It is estimated that more than P1 billion of this amount was the PDAF entitlement of senators.
On whether the unspent PDAF could still be spent despite the injunction imposed by the Supreme Court, Cayetano said: “You can’t use that as PDAF but you can realign it and use it for programs that aren’t pork barrel in nature.”
“For instance, if you can realign it in such a way that it will be part of the calamity fund and then there will be parameters how it will be used and how no senator or congressman could meddle in its use, that’s no longer pork,” Cayetano told reporters.
“It’s the same money but it’s not allotted to pork anymore,” he added.
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