‘With or without PDAF, lawmakers will help constituents’

MANILA, Philippines - Congressmen will have to attend to the concerns of their constituents with or without the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said yesterday.

“With or without PDAF, our constituents still depend on us to address their needs. We cannot and must not use the suspension or abolition of the PDAF as an excuse not to find ways to provide our less fortunate constituents with education, livelihood, housing, and other basic needs,” he said.

Belmonte made the assurance in the wake of the decision of the House of Representatives to do away with the PDAF and the order of the Supreme Court (SC) stopping further pork barrel fund releases by the Department of Budget and Management.

PDAF is the official name of the congressional pork barrel. It allocates P200 million a year for each senator and P70 million for each legislative district.

The House is abolishing the PDAF as a lump sum in the 2014 national budget and apportioning the money to several state agencies that would undertake the lawmakers’ projects.

Belmonte said House members would find a way to fulfill their mandate regardless of the fate of the PDAF.

“Zero pork does not mean zero solutions,” he said, adding the legislative mill itself offers viable alternatives for those presently benefiting from PDAF-funded programs.

The House speaker said there are pending bills that would provide scholarships to poor but deserving students, housing to the poor, poverty reduction programs, and needed infrastructure to remote communities – services that lawmakers fund with their PDAF.

He said that all the House has to do is pass the measures and ask the Senate to approve them and President Aquino to sign them into law.

He cited examples: scholarship bills filed by Taguig Rep. Lino Cayetano and Rep. Francisco Ashley Acedillo of the party-list group Magdalo, measures to provide funding support for farmers, and a bill mandating a national feeding program for children in public schools by Laguna Rep. Sol Aragones-Sampelo.

To address the problem of homelessness, Quezon City Rep. Jose Christopher Belmonte has proposed the creation of a Department of Housing, Planning and Urban Development, and a Quezon City Housing and Urban Renewal Authority.

At present, a large part of the congressmen’s PDAF goes to scholarships and medical assistance.

Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, an appropriations committee vice chairman, has launched a survey to determine how many college scholars House members are helping.

So far, he has surveyed 80 colleagues, who said they are funding the college education of about 300,000 constituents. Evardone alone is helping 3,710 of his province mates.

He said they would ask the SC to allow the release of funds for scholarships and medical assistance. – With Christina Mendez,  Alexis Romero