Bohol can still make it without PDAF—Yap

TAGBILARAN CITY , Philippines— With the cooperation of the governor and the congressmen, district-based projects can still be implemented even without the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), according to Rep. Arthur Yap (3rd district, Bohol).

Yap admitted the decision of the Supreme Court to declare PDAF as unconstitutional has an impact on the assistance capability of the government officials but it tests the resourcefulness of every congressman. The SC simply said that congressmen should not have a hand in choosing the beneficiaries and the projects after a budget bill becomes a law.    

"The provincial government has the means to help, so there has to be good coordination between the governor and the congressmen," said Yap, citing a strategy, in which the governors can ask for additional support from the national agencies and the congressmen can secure national aid and download it to the governor for use.

The governor and the congressmen can talk and agree on how to allocate the funds to the different districts, Yap said, referring also to Reps. Rene Relampagos (1st district) and Aristotle Aumentado (2nd district).    

"The three of us shall always sit down with Gov. Edgar Chatto for the two-fold strategy to continue getting funds for projects of the province and the districts as well as for the towns and barangays," he said.

Yap said governors and congressmen shall combine strategies to continue funneling national funds for local projects, even without PDAF, citing scholarship and hospitalization programs that now depend on national measures.

Congressmen are still waiting on the plan of the national government on how to incorporate their respective scholarship programs with the national agenda. Yap cited one possibility through Senator Alan Peter Cayetano who filed a bill in Senate, lobbying for a program that the national government will take out at least P8 billion from the 2013 budget, and give it as scholarship funding for all the scholars around the country covering all the scholars in all the districts in the country.

"So I hope Alan Peter Cayetano will be successful in the bicameral conference committee in inserting this P8 billion. There's no problem submitting the names because we know who are our scholars. We can file the names of our scholars," said Yap. "We just want the scholars to finish their entitlement of the benefit."

However, the hospitalization assistance that congressmen used to extend to constituents will undergo difficultly because identifying who will be the beneficiaries is impossible.

"There is a bigger problem in the hospitalization. They have to find a better solution to this, because no one can predict who would be sick or who would die during the year. In Bohol, we have a lot of constituents in the 4th and 5th class municipalities that are in poverty level. They need assistance. I want to help them, that is why I am still waiting for the solution on how to treat this hospitalization assistance," Yap said.

One way that Yap had in mind would be ask the national government to put more money in all the provincial and district hospitals for these to have funds for indigent patients.

"So I hope people are not thinking that congressmen and governors and officials all over the country are not thinking of ways on how to work together. The pork barrel has been cut, but it does not mean that it will weaken the congressmen. One can go into a partnership with the provincial government on how to fund projects and one can also assist the provincial government become stronger by getting funds from the national agencies," Yap added. (FREEMAN)