President Rodrigo Duterte is empowered to cancel projects or programs in the national budget and turn it into savings instead. Realigning NTF-ELCAC’s 2021 budget for subsidies as proposed by Villanueva is easier than done, however. Just before the 2021 General Appropriations Act (GAA) or the law on the national budget was passed in December 2020, minority senators wanted the task force’s budget reapportioned to health, social welfare, calamity response, and housing programs. This isn’t the first time that lawmakers had called to realign the P19.1-billion budget of the NTF-ELCAC. Replace the officials instead,” Sotto told Rappler. We should not be hasty in blaming a good program because of irresponsible statements from some officials.
Defunding it would give back the gains of government to the rebels. Instead, Sotto proposed replacing NTF-ELCAC’s officials who are making “irresponsible” statements. Senate President Vicente “Tito Sotto” III, however, disagreed with his colleagues, as he still considers the anti-insurgency task force as a “good” program. The community pantries – where strangers leave food and other essential items in a communal area so anyone can freely take the goods they need – started popping up due to the lack of government aid for indigent Filipinos. Villanueva then proposed reallocating the task force’s current budget into subsidies for Filipinos severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Sayang lang pera ng taong bayan (The people’s money is going to waste),” said Villanueva, who used a face palm emoji in his tweet about Parlade’s statement. “Oh my! We should move to defund NTF-ELCAC in the next budget. Senator Joel Villanueva tweeted late Wednesday night, April 21, that the P19.1-billion budget allocated this year for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Insurgency (NTF-ELCAC) is just going to waste after its spokesperson Lieutenant General Antonio Parlade Jr, likened the community pantry organizers to Satan.
Some senators are considering the removal of the multi-billion peso budget of the government’s anti-communist insurgency task force after its persistent red-tagging of community pantries.
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