Statement released by Ugnayan ng >Manggagawang Migrante Tungo sa Pag-unlad (UMANGAT)
Rome, Italy 24.082013
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Ugnayan ng Manggagawang Migrante Tungo sa Pag-unlad (UMANGAT) and the OFW
communities of Rome, Italy is calling on Congress to scrap President Benigno
Aquino III’s P1 trillion pork barrel, while calling on the legislative body to
conduct an investigation on the controversial pork barrel scam.
Amid calls to scrap the pork barrel, all funds under the discretion of any
public official, including those allotted to the President, should be subject
to investigation and thorough scrutiny.
For so long, we have been told that the PDAF or pork barrel is necessary to
deliver public service. What has happened is that this system has stood as one
of the biggest sources of corruption, with public service becoming a mere
excuse for plunder.
It is appalling that the poor are again being used to enrich the powerful.
As the fertilizer and other similar scams have shown, the poor get nothing but
ghost deliveries while millions of pesos are channelled to the bank accounts of
the politicians and their private contractors.
President Aquino seeks to downplay the
impact of the PDAF scam, even saying that it is small compared to the scams
during the time of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. What he is not saying however is
that the scams from the time of Arroyo have persisted even up to the time of
Aquino and so far no one has been held accountable. There is continuity and
impunity in massive corruption such that Aquino’s claims of ‘daang matuwid’ are
exposed as nothing but rhetoric.
the President’s P1 trillion share in the P2.6-trillion proposed budget for
2014 is a “fiscal crime against the people”, considering the continuous decline
in the quality of social services under Aquino’s term. This is especially more
scandalous for OFWs who have been getting a share of less than one percent of
aggregate funds in the national budget since 2010. Each OFW only gets roughly
P260 per capita spending per fiscal year. This injustice against the migrant
sector is the kind of thanks the OFWs get from the government after bringing in
$21 billion in OFW remittances.
Since 2010, the Aquino government has slashed funds for direct OFW
services, passed on the burden to OFWs through various fees and collections,
and continue to deprive OFWs of those very funds that came from their hard work
and sacrifice. Needless to say, OFWs have a stake on how public funds should be
used and allocated and are united in calling for the scrapping of Aquino’s
P1-trillion pork.
SCRAP PNOY’S 1
TRILLION PORK BARREL !!!
ABOLISH THE PDAF !!!
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