Speaker wants to abolish graft-ridden Road Board

Long considered a repository of corruption, the Road Board may soon be abolished and the multibillion-peso Road User’s Tax remitted to the national treasury under a bill filed by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

The House leader filed on Tuesday a measure seeking to abolish the Road Board and to divert its functions to other government agencies to prevent misuse of the proceeds of the Road User’s Tax or Road Fund, pegged at P14 billion from 2001 to June 2016.

Under House Bill No. 6236, Alvarez proposes transferring both the board’s functions and Road User’s Tax collections to the Department of Public Works and Highways and to the Department of Transportation.

The bill states that all collections of the Road Fund shall be “remitted to the National Treasury and shall be appropriated to the proper government departments such as the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of Transportation, which will implement the road safety measures and projects.”

The Road Board was created under Republic Act No. 8794, imposing a motor vehicle users’ charge on owners of all types of motor vehicles.

It is tasked to ensure prudent and efficient management and use of the special funds known as the Road User’s Tax or Road Fund, which is earmarked exclusively for road maintenance and improvement of road drainage, installation of efficient traffic lights and road safety devices, and air pollution control.

But over the years, according to Alvarez, the Commission on Audit (COA) has unearthed signs of illegal use of the Road Fund.

“Obviously, the Road Board is just another layer of bureaucracy, which became another avenue for graft and corruption,” Alvarez said in a statement.

The measure is coauthored by Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas.

The Speaker cited COA reports showing that some P515.5 million of the Road Fund was used in 2004 to 2008 to pay off salaries, allowances, maintenance and other operating expenses that were properly chargeable to the regular budget.

In 2011, P62.52 million of the Road Fund was used for the Road Board’s engineering and administrative overhead expenses, according to COA.