Evardone: DAP funds ‘put to good use’

By: Marc Jayson Cayabyab - 10 years ago

Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines – Eastern Samar Representative Ben Evardone said funds from the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) have been beneficial to the country despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that it is illegal.

In a text message, Evardone said DAP funded houses for informal settler, Doppler radars, and electrification in remote sitios (sub-villages).

“It was really beneficial to the people, especially in the countryside,” Evardone said.

Evardone even furnished a list of some of the DAP-funded projects reported to the House of Representatives appropriations committee, of which he is vice chairperson.

“This is an indication that some projects under DAP were put to good use,” Evardone later explained in a phone interview.

He added though that even if it is his position that DAP should not have been declared unconstitutional, Congress should still respect the high court’s decision.

He said he would file a bill clarifying the meaning of savings so that Congress would still be able to use these quarterly instead of utilizing the money at the end of the year. He said the SC decision on DAP deems as unconstitutional the practice of withdrawing savings from unspent appropriations.

Evardone is referring to the SC’s decision declaring as unconstitutional the “withdrawal of unobligated allotments from the implementing agencies, and the declaration of the withdrawn unobligated allotments and unreleased appropriations as savings prior to the end of the fiscal year and without complying with the statutory definition of savings contained in the General Appropriations Acts.”

“That’s our position, but we have to respect the position of the Supreme Court, and we have to make the necessary adjustments in the legislative,” he said when asked if he thinks DAP should not have been struck down.

Topping Evardone’s list of projects supposedly funded by DAP is the construction of medium-rise buildings to shelter 24,000 informal settler families in Pasig and Iloilo worth P11.05 billion in DAP funds.

The DAP funds went to the National Housing Authority to provide housing for informal settlers living along rivers, esteros and waterways, according to the list.

Meanwhile, P5 billion were spent for the Tourism Road Infrastructure Program, a convergence program between the Department of Public Works and Highways and Department of Tourism to enhance accessibility in tourist hotspots, according to Evardone’s list.

Also, P4.08 billion funds were spent to refund the unremitted GSIS (Government Service Insurance System) premiums for 93,500 public school teachers with suspended GSIS benefits.

The other DAP-funded projects in Evardone’s list are:

P1.878 billion – Creation and hiring of non-uniformed personnel in the Police Regional Offices to replace uniformed personnel doing administrative work, under the Department of Interior and Local Government and Philippine National Police
P1.6 billion – for the National Disaster Risk Exposure and Assessment for Mitigation Program (under Project NOAH of the Department of Science and Technology) which seeks to establish an integrated flood early warning system in all the 18 major river basins.
P1.264 billion – Sitio Electrification Program under the Department of Energy/National Electrification Administration, that seeks to provide electricity in the most remote areas, with a target of 32,441 sitios at the end of the Aquino administration. With DAP funds, the sitios energized since 2011 went up by 30 percent.
P1.1 billion – Supplement to the Training for Work Scholarship Program under Tesda for the Business Process Outsourcing sector and the four priority sectors (agriculture/agri-business, tourism, retirement, health and wellness, general infrastructure, and electronics/semi-conductor).
P294 million – RN Heals program that trains and deploys registered nurses to poor rural communities. Of the 20,000 nurses under the program, 12,400 were trained and deployed using DAP funds.
P275 million – Establishment of the National Meteorological and Climate Center (under Pagasa), which will be equipped with research laboratories, weather and climate modeling hubs, training center and auditoriums, among others
P150 million – Acquisition of three Doppler radars and construction of radar towers for these radars (under DOST)

DAP funds, essentially an economic stimulus fund and a savings-impounding mechanism, have been criticized after Senator Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada exposed that the supposed presidential “pork barrel” funds were given allegedly as incentives to senators who voted to oust convicted Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Various groups lauded the SC’s move to rule DAP, criticized as the president’s “pork barrel,” as illegal.

Militant groups said they would file an impeachment complaint against Aquino over DAP, but presidential allies in Congress said they would block it.