The House plenary hall (Contributed photo)
House Speaker Martin Romualdez had earlier vowed that congressmen will pass the proposed P5.768-trillion National Expenditure Program (NEP) or national budget for 2024 in just five weeks.
Four of these weeks will be used by the House Committee on Appropriations to scrutinize the NEP by going through each of the departments' individual budgets, while the fifth week will be used to approve the eventual General Appropriations Bill (GAB) on third and final reading in plenary.
Week one of the budget process is already in the books. Before information overload takes over, here are the most intriguing angles from the week that was:
1. It's not easy to know how many Philippine islands in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) are "illegally occupied"
Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman asked not one, but two agencies--the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to get an idea of the actual magnitude of China’s incursions in WPS.
Lagman, an administration critic, first asked the DFA on Aug. 15, only it didn't have the information and was instead told to seek the answers from the DENR.
When the Bicolano asked DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga during the appropriations panel's public hearing the next day, the latter initially requested for an executive session, meaning the information had to be disclosed behind closed doors.
Lagman pressed for public disclosure, but Yulo-Loyzaga said that the "actual identification of the illegally occupied areas" would only released after gaining clearance for the National Security Council.
"We will request the clearance," the DENR chief told Lagman.
2. There is an ongoing moratorium on 4Ps delisting
Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian confirmed to the appropriations panel on Aug. 17 that there's an ongoing moratorium on the delisting of families from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).
This moratorium runs concurrently with the DSWD's reassessment of some 1.4 million families that were earlier dropped from the national government's flagship poverty alleviation program.
Gatchalian hinted that the moratorium will last until September, or pending the results of the Social Welfare Development Indicators (SWDI) test implemented on these families to find out whether they are poor or non-poor.
Gatchalian said the DSWD "inherited" this reassessment from former agency secretary and now ACT-CIS Party-list Rep. Erwin Tulfo.
3. 2 'contractual workers' from DOT resign over 'Love the Philippines' mess
Department of Tourism (DOT) Undersecretary Mae Ellaine Bathan revealed during the interpellation of ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro on Aug. 15 that two agency employees tendered their resignation following the "Love the Philippines" rebranding controversy.
When asked by Castro to name these former employees, the undersecretary said: "For purposes of the privacy also of these persons, we're willing to submit these names. But they are already one or two of those who have already tendered their resignation and are no longer part of the department."
"These are courtesy resignations that are tendered for those we have--their job in the branding department whose work we have contracted out as job order employees," Bathan added.
For her part, Castro, a House deputy minority leader, was upset to find out that only two contractual workers bore the brunt of Love the Philippines fiasco, which she said bought embarrassment to the country.
Unbeknown to the DOT, the contractor for the rebranding effort, Doyle, Dane & Bernbach (DDB) Philippines, used stock footage from tourist sites in other countries in the promotional video that it produced for the Philippines.