CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines—Former Masantol Vice Mayor Marcelo Lacap Jr. said several fishermen in his town, who were the supposed beneficiaries of the Malampaya Fund in Pampanga province, welcomed the Senate probe on the use of money from the operation of the Malampaya natural gas field in Palawan province.
“Their only wish is that they would be removed from the list of supposed beneficiaries of farming implements from the [Department of Agrarian Reform] so that they would not be liable in any case on the misuse of public funds,” Lacap said by telephone on Monday.
Inquirer contacts among the fishermen in Masantol were not available on Monday. They were guarding their ponds from demolition by the Department of Public Works and Highways.
It was only during a validation by the Commission on Audit (COA) in July 2012 that the fishermen discovered the irregularity. Each package supposedly costs P35,781 and was allegedly distributed by the Kaudpanan para sa Mangunguma Foundation Inc. (KMFI), confirmed to be part of the network of alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.
The recipients were estimated to be about 2,500, and the project funds amounted to around P89.2 million, documents showed.
John Raymund de Asis, president and chair of KMFI, was unavailable for comment. Local officials denied knowledge of the project.
The COA’s 2010 report showed that from 2002 to 2010, P23.601 billion from the Malampaya Fund was released to various government agencies and the provincial government of Palawan, an Inquirer story in 2011 showed.
National government agencies received P19.643 billion, and only 1.27 percent of this went to the Department of Energy for the electrification of 211 villages.
The remaining 98.73 percent, or P19.39 billion, went to various projects other than exploration, development and exploitation of energy resources.
These projects included the rehabilitation of agricultural industries and agrarian reform communities affected by Tropical Storm “Ondoy” and
Typhoon “Pepeng,” the relocation of families displaced by typhoons, the rehabilitation of roads and bridges and the modernization program of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The funds went to the departments and agencies concerned.–Tonette Orejas