Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto on Sunday slammed the proposal to disqualify companies engaged in tobacco and other industries “in conflict with public health.”
“This is legislation by IRR (Implementing Rules and Regulations), a bad habit by bureaucrats who imagine themselves as the third chamber of Congress,” he said, noting that no such provision exists in the Covid-19 Vaccination Program Act of 2021 or Republic Act No. 11525.
Recto questioned two phrases in the draft section of the IRR that “will sabotage the public-private vaccination partnership.”
The first is that “any private entity should not be in ‘any way related’ to the tobacco industry, to the baby formula business,” he said.
“So this can be read that a pharmaceutical company that plans to procure vaccines, half of which it shall donate to the government, cannot do so simply because it has breastmilk substitutes in its product catalog,” Recto said.
“Also, will an airline company with an interlocking directorship with a tobacco company be likewise banned under that provision?” he added.
The second questionable phrase, according to Recto, is the ban on companies dealing with “other products in conflict with public health.”
“But the list in the government almanac of unhealthy products whose consumption is punished by a tax is long. It includes soda, sugared products and alcohol,” he said.
Recto noted that sin tax paid by sweetened beverages was P38.6 billion in 2019, and P28.6 billion in 2020. For alcohol, it was P77 billion in 2019, and P62 billion in 2020. Tobacco was P147 billion in 2019, and P139 billion in 2020.
“If these merchants of sin would like to plow back their profits in the form of vaccines, half for their workers and half for the people, why would a fumbling government illegalize such an offer of help?” he said.
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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