Hundreds of thousands of state workers were deprived of salary increases and modest bonuses when the Department of Budget and Management shifted their benefits to projects funded by the Disbursement Acceleration Program over the last three years. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines–Hundreds of thousands of state workers were deprived of salary increases and modest bonuses when the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) shifted their benefits to projects funded by the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) over the last three years.
The beneficiaries of this massive and recently declared unconstitutional transfer of funds include senators who poured their allocations to fake nongovernment organizations (NGOs) of Janet Lim-Napoles and favored provinces and districts such as Tarlac and Batanes, the hometowns of President Aquino and Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, respectively.
In a text message, however, Abad said: “Tell Courage to study the figures well. As usual they got it all wrong. We will issue a press release to explain the P98 billion [on Thursday].”
In a phone interview, Ferdinand Gaite, president of Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage), claimed that the government employees were “robbed” of their modest bonuses and salary upgrades when the DBM decided to unilaterally declare in midyear as savings the P61.90 billion Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund (MPBF) and P36 billion from the Pension and Gratuity Fund (PGF) and reallocated these funds to DAP projects from 2011 to 2013.
Gaite explained that government workers—from regular agencies like the Department of Education to constitutional bodies such as the judiciary numbering an estimated 1.4 million—normally received bonuses from their agency’s savings sourced from the rationalization program and the unfilled positions at the end of each year.
He also noted that Congress had likewise allocated performance-based incentives that government workers lobbied for in the collective negotiation agreement (CNA) that the DBM transferred to the DAP projects.
Gaite cited the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) as among the agencies unduly deprived of their benefits because these were moved to DAP. He said the MMDA declared P201 million in savings in 2012 that should have been given to its 4,000 employees as their CNA Incentives.
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said that thousands of public school teachers and health workers had complained to his group that their bonuses were “halved” to what they were supposed to get because these went to the DAP projects.
Reyes claimed that the government released roughly P17 billion in DAP funds categorized as local government unit funds in three lump sums—P6.5 billion from Nov. 29 to Dec. 22, 2011; P1.88 billion on Dec. 22, 2011; and P8.295 billion from July 31, 2012 to March 15, 2013.
The projects funded by these projects were no different from the activities preferred by lawmakers for their pork barrel funds—farm-to-market roads, public markets, high value crops, medical and financial assistance to indigents, and scholarships.
Reyes believed that the second tranche of P1.88 billion disbursed by the Aquino administration as a “bribe” in the impeachment and conviction of then Chief Justice Renato Corona included P1 billion for farm-to-market roads coursed through the Department of Agriculture; P230 million for a milk feeding program through the National Dairy Authority; and P100 million for livelihood and training programs of the Technology Resource Center. He said that all three agencies had been embroiled in the pork barrel scam where state funds were funneled to sham NGOs in exchange for kickbacks for lawmakers.
Reyes also noted that the DBM list showed that the P54 million in DAP funds were given to the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos from December 2011 to February 2013, which was under investigation by the Commission on Audit for failing to account for state funds, including pork barrel money, that went to dubious NGOs.
He said the DBM had yet to explain the P370 million in DAP funds that were coursed through the National Livelihood Development Corp. and endorsed by Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla, Tito Sotto III and Bongbong Marcos to fake NGOs of Napoles.
Reyes noted that the President and Abad themselves benefited from DAP funds. He said P2 billion in infrastructure projects went to Tarlac and P471.5 million in compensation for the Cojuangcos in the forced sale of Hacienda Luisita under the agrarian reform program.
Reyes said that Abad’s home province of Batanes, with a population of 17,000, got an extra year’s worth of a congressman’s pork barrel as roughly P70 million in DAP funds from 2011 to 2013 went to dozens of barangays (villages) in the tiny island district where Abad’s wife, Henedina, is the representative.
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