Senior Deputy Minority Leader Paul Ruiz Daza filed a bill that seeks to penalize negligent parents, particularly those who refuse to provide child support with imprisonment.
House Bill 44 imposes fines or imprisonment or both on errant parents.
The bill, titled “An Act Ensuring Child Support and Penalizing Parental Refusal or Neglect Thereof,” Daza said during initial deliberation by the House of Representatives” Committee on the Welfare of Children, “puts more teeth on the various laws and issuances that protect children.”
“In my version of the bill, I included harsh penalties like imprisonment, to strengthen mandates on child welfare and protection.” “Make the law na talagang magkaroon ng ngipin para matakot iyong non-custodial parent, para magbayad, magbigay ng child support (to really have teeth, to scare the non-custodial parent into providing child support) ” said Daza.
“There are already existing child support provisions in the Family Code,” Daza acknowledged, lamenting on the persistence of parental negligence as a “perennial problem” among Filipino households.
Daza cited a World Health Organization study that there may be up to 14 million single-parent households in the Philippines.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) through Assistant Bureau Director Miramel Garcia-Laxa, concurred with Daza’s sentiments, revealing inside the deliberations that around 280 child custody cases were brought to their attention in 2022 alone. Laxa also shared the department’s support for the bill, calling it “a priority legislative agenda.”
The Philippine National Police (PNP), meanwhile, had recorded 3,684 cases of economic violence against women from 2018 to 2023, according to Brig. Gen. Matthew Bacay, which includes child support negligence under under Republic Act 9262.