LAWMAKERS on Thursday ordered Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo to explain her department’s Memorandum 9 that was released in the wake of the Supreme Court decision declaring the Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel fund unconstitutional.
During the hearing on her department’s proposed budget for 2017, House Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas asked Taguiwalo about her recent pronouncement that the lawmakers themselves could directly provide financial assistance to their constituents instead of her department.
“If we will have to use our own money, then we will be promoting patronage politics, precisely why we have public funds to be given to the people,” Fariñas told Taguiwalo at the House committee on appropriations led by Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles.
But Taguiwalo said it was never the intention of her signed memorandum to prevent lawmakers from endorsing beneficiaries to her department.
But she was quick to say that she wanted to discourage the practice of lawmakers asking special projects from her department as it had a P200-million allocation for each lawmaker.
She also said she was clueless over audit findings of unliquidated cash advances and ghost beneficiaries involving the conditional cash transfer program or dole to the poor that happened even before she assumed office.
She said her department was investigating the matter.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Ralph Recto on Thursday scored the P800-million cut in Social Welfare’s budget to feed malnourished children.
He said the government’s 13-peso budget per meal to feed a malnourished child was lower than the meal costing P16.70 served to each prisoner.
“If we are bothered by the small food budget given to convicts, then we should be outraged over the pitifully smaller allocation for meals of children in daycare centers and schools,” Recto said.
Taguiwalo faced lawmakers to defend her department’s proposed P129.8-billion budget for 2017.
Negros Oriental Rep. Arnie Teves also asked Taguiwalo on Memorandum 9 and her statement that lawmakers and Social Welfare could work together to extend the much-needed assistance to the constituents of House members.
“But there should be no special entitlements of sort [extended to lawmakers],” Taguiwalo said.
Teves said congressmen would know best what their constituents needed, and that it was not for Social Welfare to decide on the matter.
“The money is not yours. It is the people’s money,” Teves said.