The leaders of the House of Representatives will respond to the call of a senator for both chambers of Congress to meet “to hammer out a better Road Board abolition bill,” House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. said Sunday.
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“On the part of the House, we will designate the members of our contingent to the bicameral conference committee on our first session day on January 14,” Andaya said.
He said the proposal of Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri “is the way forward for both houses to jointly cure the bill of its defects, instead of carelessly sending to the President a flawed and faulty one which does not offer reforms but more of the same bad practices.
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“We will heed the President ’s guidance by crafting a version that will truly abolish the board and move the spending of the MVUC [Motor Vehicle Users’ Charge] collection from darkness into light,” Andaya said.
He said the House was all for the dismantling of the Road Board.
“We do not want its powers to be merely transferred to three secretaries who will in effect be Three Road Kings who can spend the MVUC at will,” Andaya said.
“We will ensure that all proceeds from the MVUC form part of the General Fund. We want to strip MVUC collections of its status as a hidden off-budget item that will be spent by one person in an untransparent way.
“We want itemized spending the people can see.
We will ensure that the law will provide that every centavo taken from the motorists will be spent for their relief. Non-road-use activities like garbage collection would have to be stricken off the spending menu.”