No wonder the country is screwed up when it comes to the national budget: many of those tasked to craft and implement it are among its biggest violators, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said Sunday.
Lacson lamented many from the executive and legislative branches engage in politics that allow some House members to have their “favorite” district engineers assigned to their districts to implement their “pet projects.”
“The abominable part is, the violators are lawmakers and those tasked to implement the GAA. That is why we are so screwed up as a country for as long as we remember politicians,” he said in a statement.
Earlier, Lacson disclosed more than half a trillion pesos’ worth of questionable items such as reappropriations and lump sums in the Department of Public Works and Highways’ P666.4-billion proposed budget for 2021.
He also cited information from some congressmen indicating the questionable items, including a pattern of increases for local projects and decreases for national projects, may have stemmed from haggling between lawmakers and the DPWH.
On the other hand, Lacson said the DPWH secretary, despite his denials, could not stand up to the pressure from congressmen to assign their favored engineers to their districts.
As a result, there are many dilapidated and substandard roads and bridges and other infrastructure projects; potholes and clogged drainage; and worn-out infra projects even only after a few years of construction and inaugurations, he said.
“This is the main reason why I abhor and remain outspoken against the pork barrel system more than a decade before the Supreme Court ruled on its unconstitutionality in 2013. The national budget is the most violated, if not the most abused law of the land,” Lacson said.
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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