The vice chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations has issued a strong appeal to the Department of Social Welfare and Development not to scrimp and spend the over P83 billion in unused funds for victims of the recently devastating typhoons.
Rep. Alfred Vargas (PDP-Laban, Quezon City) said the DSWD only has less than two months to spend the unutilized fund before the money is returned to the national coffers as savings.
Vargas said the DSWD must immediately act to help Filipinos who continue to suffer the adverse impact of the successive typhoons that hit the country in recent weeks.
“The DSWD should go all out and spend up to the very last cent of its funds to ease the poor’s suffering, especially as this challenging year draws to a close. Dapat maramdaman ng ating mga kababayang nasalanta ng kalamidad ang kalinga at malasakit ng pamahalaan (Our citizens should feel the concern of the government at this time after a calamity),” he said.
Vargas, a senior member of the House Special Committee on Disaster Resilience, said DSWD’s assistance will go a long way to help Filipinos who lost their homes and livelihood due to Typhoons Quinta, Rolly and Ulysses in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“DSWD cannot let its unused funds simply expire at a time when many Filipinos need help. It should work double time to extend assistance to typhoon victims so they can start anew,” he said.
In the recent Senate plenary deliberations on the proposed 2021 national budget, it was revealed that the DSWD still maintains P75 billion in unused funds from its 2020 appropriations.
It was also revealed that the agency’s 2019 budget still contains P1.5 billion in unspent fund, apart from the P6.7 billion in unobligated funds from the two “Bayanihan” laws passed by Congress to address the COVID-19 crisis.
Vargas said data from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) showed around 835,399 families or over 3.5 million people in Luzon were affected by Typhoon Ulysses alone
The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, said the three typhoons which hit the country between October and early November caused P10-billion worth of damage to agriculture.