The Senate finance sub-committee on Monday, Oct. 10, 2022, lamented the sorry state of the government’s broadcast stations that had been operating on a shoe-string budgets through the years.

This as Senator Joseph Victor ‘’JV’’ Ejercito, committee chairman, vowed to help the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) get the approval of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to increase their budgets, at least for the increased pay and payment of retirement benefits to employees of PTV4 and IBC 13 TV stations.

Lawyer Cheloy Velicaria Garafil, press undersecretary and office-in-charge of the Office of the Press Secretary, told Senator Raffy Tulfo that she would be visiting PTV 4 this week to see for herself the ‘’pitiful sight’’ inside the government TV station where employees tie their chairs to tables lest others would ‘’pirate’’ the chairs and unsightly toilets.

Tulfo, who honed his media career at PTV 4 for about 20 years, blamed corruption by top former TV station officials for the sorry station of the network.

‘’They pocketed the money,’’ he said.

Without P617 million for the retirement pay and other pay benefits since the 2023 National Expenditure Program of the Marcos administration, IBC 13 would be forced to shut down in June 2023, IBC officials said.

IBC !3, a corporation sequestered way back in 1986, is requesting for P979 million to modernize it to make it viable for future buyers, according to Hexilon Alvarez, IBC president, told Ejercito.

For 2023, IBC would have no government subsidy for the first time in years. Closure of IBC 13 would affect 172 families.

Based on statements of OPS officials, Ejercito expressed hopes that the problems plaguing PTV 4 and IBC 13 would be addressed in six months to two years as studies on their viability had been monitored by the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP).

For the meantime, employees of OPS and its attached agencies would have to contend with the tight financial space that the Marcos administration is facing, Ejercito said.

The House of Representatives recently approved a P1.24 billion 2023 budget for the Office of the President.

Garafil presented to senators during a public hearing a video presentation of the OPS’s budgetn and its request for additional an P2.037 billion budget of which P675.83 million would go to PTV 4.

For the meantime, employees of OPS and its attached agencies would have to contend with the tight financial space that the Marcos administration is facing, Ejercito said.

Ejercito assured top OPS officials that he would be submitting to the Senate mother finance committee his recommendation approving the proposed P1.04 billion budget for OPS for the next fiscal year.