MANILA, Philippines — A Senate panel on Wednesday restored around P45 million to the Office of the Vice President's proposed budget for 2021 after it was cut by the Department of Budget and Management.
Vice President Leni Robredo told the Senate Committee on Finance that the amount was allotted for the replacement of service vehicles used in the relief operations conducted by the OVP.
"We have a lot of vehicles which cannot be used anymore but [DBM] disallowed it," Robredo told the Senate panel.
"We have about six vehicles which could not be used anymore...For our relief operations, we have been using the private vehicles of our staff already since we cannot use office vehicles anymore," she added.
She further revealed that this prevented the OVP from being able to charge its gasoline expenses, meaning Robredo's staffers have been paying for the gas used for relief operations with their own money.
Calling this justification sufficient, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon moved to restore the full budget requested by the OVP for 2021 worth P723.39 million which was originally reduced by the DBM to P679.7 million under the National Expenditure Program.
Drilon's manifestation was supported by Sens. Nancy Binay, Bong Revilla, Lito Lapid and Kiko Pangilinan.
"I think everyone is unanimous, and I think the committee really has to move forward with this," Sen. Sonny Angara, who chairs the Senate Committee on Finance said.
"This early, I think its clear that the support will be overwhelming for the Office of the Vice President," he added.
Binay said she would support even increasing the proposed budget for the OVP.
"Based on the [Commission on Audit] reports and based on the report of the vice president, clearly these resources are put to good use and will definitely go a long way and will not go to waste as the track record and the COA reports have shown," Pangilinan said.
Robredo's office received the highest audit rating from COA in 2019 and 2018.
"We are confident that with the proposed budget for OVP next year, we can further expand the work with our partners to contribute to our shared goals of defeating the virus and improving the lives of our people," Robredo told senators.
The vice president recently questioned the government's move to dump artificial white sand on Manila Bay when the money could have been used to feed 80,000 hungry families amid the coronavirus pandemic. Malacañang defended the P389-million budget for "beach nourishment" after Robredo called the project "insensitive". — Bella Perez-Rubio with a report from The STAR's Paolo Romero
This article first appeared on PhilStar.
Enjoyed the article? We are a team of volunteers who want to provide relevant and factual information. We appreciate any amount of donation to keep the inspiring stories from our team coming! 🙏
she is not not vice pres she is pres of complaint
ReplyDelete