THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Philippines needs billions of pesos for rehab

Philippines needs billions of pesos for rehab

War in Zamboanga, one typhoon after another, floods and landslides everywhere, millions of Filipinos jobless and hungry, politicians looting the Treasury, and now a powerful earthquake in the central Visayas that destroyed heritage churches, buildings, ro

What other disasters await us? It is as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping toward us. Is God punishing us because of corruption?
It will take billions of pesos to restore those churches, which are part of our cultural pride, as well as the roads and bridges and homes destroyed in Zamboanga, Bohol, Cebu and elsewhere. Where are we going to get those billions?
Now we can see the folly of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in realigning savings to form the Disbursement Acceleration Programme, only to give these as “bribes” to senators and congressmen. Now we need those billions of pesos in savings to rehabilitate devastated areas.
The excuse given by the DBM is to hasten government spending to pump more money into the economy. How can all that money improve the economy when most of it goes to private pockets?
If the government needs to spend more money faster, why not use the savings to build more schools, more homes for the homeless, or more feeder roads in the rural areas (not in the cities such as Manila where perfectly good concrete streets are torn up so more concrete can be poured into the holes just to give more projects to private contractors)? 
Why not use the savings to put up more power plants to provide more and cheaper power to industries, to make them more competitive in the world market? 
Or why not use the savings to put up factories to provide jobs to millions of jobless Filipinos? That will really improve the economy because it will put money in the hands of consumers, who can then use it to buy the goods that factories will turn out.
So many rural communities are begging for more schools and feeder roads, but the government always pleads “no funds”. Why do the funds not disappear when they are being stolen by our public officials?
We put billions of pesos in the Conditional Cash Transfer programme under which the government gives money to poor families in exchange for them sending their children to school, but we do not provide the latter with enough classrooms and teachers. Excuse: no funds.
Yet the DBM finds billions of pesos in savings with which to “bribe” lawmakers.
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