Account for P115-B Yolanda fund, Palace urged

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang is being asked to account first for about P115 billion in Yolanda reconstruction funds before asking for billions more from Congress for the same purpose.

Senior deputy minority leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares made the appeal yesterday in the wake of President Aquino’s inclusion of P9.5 billion in his proposed P22.5-billion supplemental budget for this year.

“They should first account for all those billions that Congress allocated for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of communities devastated by Super Typhoon Yolanda,” Colmenares said.

He recalled that Congress had included a P100-billion Yolanda reconstruction fund in the 2014 budget.

He said before 2013 ended, just a month after the killer typhoon pummeled the Samar-Leyte provinces and other parts of the Visayas, Congress approved a P14.6-billion supplemental budget for victims of Yolanda and previous disasters.

On top of these funds, he said the House and the Senate passed a joint resolution authorizing the use of the balances of 2013 appropriations to help calamity and disaster victims.

“They have not rendered an accounting of all these funds, and now they are asking for P9.5 billion more,” he added.

Of the P9.5 billion in the proposed 2014 additional budget, P8 billion would go to the National Housing Authority (NHA) for the construction of permanent housing for Yolanda victims.

The remaining P1.5 billion would be allocated to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for “temporary shelter assistance” for the same victims.

Last May 14, the Senate-House committee on public expenditures conducted a hearing at the Batasan complex in Quezon City on Yolanda fund releases.

Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, appropriations committee chairman, and his Senate counterpart, Francis Escudero, jointly chair the oversight panel.

NHA general manager Chito Cruz informed the panel that his agency had received at that time about P11 billion for the construction of permanent housing, but that only 50 units had been finished and turned over to displaced families in Tanauan town in Leyte.

He said NHA was in the process of constructing an additional 1,000 houses out of the 220,000 units it has been tasked to build.

“Our problem is with the land. We can only build on public land. So far, out of the more than 1,300 hectares that we need, local government units have given us 125 hectares. We are suggesting that we be authorized to buy private land,” he said.

He added that they also have to secure the necessary clearances and permits from several agencies like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources before they can begin building houses on public land.

The oversight panel also learned that of the P100-billion Yolanda reconstruction fund in the 2014 budget, only P3.7 billion had been used.

The information prompted Escudero to say, “It has already been six months since Yolanda. Why are we so slow in helping the victims? There is a lot of money and yet we are not spending it. We have not heard anything that is good and promising.”

He said the concerned agencies “do not have the sense of urgency that our people are clamoring for” and President Aquino should tell these agencies to do their job faster.

Colmenares said Malacañang and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) should explain in detail the appropriations contained in the proposed 2014 supplemental budget, including those for Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) projects.