Angara bill seeks tougher penalties vs illegal traders of nat’l artifacts

Opposition leader Sen. Edgardo Angara proposed yesterday to create a National Heritage Commission to oversee the conservation, protection and promotion of the country’s historical and cultural heritage.

The proposal was embodied in Senate Bill 1355 which also carries a list of prohibited acts to help in the conservation effort and deter the destruction and illegal trade of the country’s national treasures, Angara said in a statement.

"There is a flourishing illicit trade on national artifacts and other cultural treasures. There should be a deterrent and this proposal definitely seeks to strengthen the government capability in dealing with the illicit trade," he added.

Angara said the proposed commission shall establish the national standards, principles and policies for the conservation of the country’s historical and cultural resources.

Under the bill, the proposed commission shall see to it that no cultural object, artifact or historical material is taken out of the country without government consent.

The commission will be empowered to purchase a cultural treasure or artifact or initiate expropriation proceedings if necessary. It shall also seek funding for conservation projects and lay down the rules on administering and managing conservation sites.

The bill also seeks to prohibit the exportation and excavation of artifacts without government permission, the destruction or mutilation of any cultural treasure and the alteration of the original features of any national shrine, monument or landmark.

Penalties for violators are a prison term of not less than 10 years or a fine of not less than P200,000.

Angara said the proposed commission shall be composed of the education secretary, director of the National Historical Institute, president of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and secretaries of tourism and interior and local government.

In another development, Angara also urged that the entry-level salary for government nurses be increased to at least P14,000 a month from the current monthly pay of P9,039.

In the plenary debates on proposed amendments to the Philippine Nursing Act of 1991, which Angara himself authored, the senator said the salary hike is needed to stop the mass exodus of Filipino nurses for higher paying jobs abroad.

Angara said that the P14,000 minimum entry-level salary for government nurses is more than justified as this is now the minimum pay for soldiers and policemen.

But experienced and well-educated Filipino nurses are paid as much as P200,000 to P300,000 overseas, giving nurses a very strong incentive to seek employment abroad.

"The great disparity between domestic pay and overseas pay is a very powerful reason for our nurses to work overseas," Angara said, warning that government hospitals will run out of nurses in five years if there is no incentive scheme to make local nursing jobs more attractive.

Last year, more than 14,000 nurses left for jobs overseas and this was more than double the 6,000 average size of nursing school graduates from 1999 to 2000, Angara said.

From January to May this year, a total of 4,700 nurses left for jobs overseas, representing 85 percent of the nursing students who will graduate this year, he added.

The senator said the exodus of nurses has left a big void in critical areas of the country’s health care program and increasing their salaries is only one step to stop the outflow.

Angara, Senate health committee chairman during the eighth and ninth Congress, was the author of several landmark laws on health, including the Magna Carta for Public Health Workers, National Insurance Program that created the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. and the Breast-Feeding Act.