What’s with Secretary Abad?

This question is being asked by concerned observers after the Senate committee on finance found out yet another questionable realignment in P-Noy’s 2011 budget, courtesy of Budget Secretary Butch Abad. This time the reduction involves the budget of the government’s housing agencies under the HUDCC by 50 percent — from P11 billion in 2010 to P5.6 billion in this year’s appropriations bill, ostensibly, the cut portion was reallocated to the DSWD (the luckiest agency under the proposed 2011 budget with a whooping 1000 percent increase) and the DILG, which in the message advised Congress, will undertake their own housing programs on a more focused basis, whatever that means. Of course, this sleight-of-hand operation did not sit well with Vice-President and HUDCC Chairman Jojo Binay who rightly advised the senators that the cut will definitely impact on the agency’s efforts to accomplish its targets for the year. Even the rationale advanced by Abad’s people that the DSWD is also involved in resettlement projects, especially those affected by last year’s devastating typhoons and that the DILG portion, will be used exclusively for the housing of uniformed personnel, i.e., police, firemen and jail employees, is flippant and unavailing. No less than finance sub-committee chairman, Sen. Ed Angara, decried the re-allotment saying: Why transfer the funds to agencies whose core competence and mandates are far removed from housing?

Angara’s point. Said Angara: “We seem to have the tendency to scatter resources instead of concentrating them in the department in charge. Not only does this not make sense at all in terms of capability and personnel orientation but in terms of transparency and accountability as well… You never know if the allocation, for instance, of houses by the DSWD is on the basis of need as the agency has an all encompassing shotgun type of giving out welfare assistance. They are pretty good in carrying out conditional cash transfers but housing? On the other hand, the DILG may also have the capability and the personnel but they are limited. they need a brother, a partner, a partnership with the housing units..” which should really be the case especially since P-Noy himself has promised that under this administration, government will be “lean and mean” and that he will not countenance any kind of unwarranted fat embedded in the annual appropriations program. Well, he will have to ask Abad to step up to the plate and let his congressional allies do what needs to be done.

This is not the first time and will probably not be the last that Secretary Abad’s “cut and paste” measures will be questioned by members of Congress and other concerned observers. The DSWD budget which boasts a 1000 percent increase was lambasted by House members for promoting a “culture of dependency”with its huge and potentially problematic outlay for conditional cash transfers. Members took the view that borrowing money for these essentially non-productive transfers will not only bloat our debt stock and ensure dependency, but will also promote an unsustainable air of rising expectations as the recipients are led to claim this as some kind of a “birth right.” We have seen this kind of mindset called dole outs in more civil circles implanted in people. We have seen this in the Payatas and Tondo colonies and in the hamlets in so-called insurgent areas. The most graphic illustration of this kind of mindset was the community of informal dwellers who engaged police in stone throwing at the North Triangle area last week. When asked why they insist on staying in a land which is not theirs, they insisted that they have every right to be there since they were “allowed” to stay there for years before government decided to have other uses for the land.

Why, they even insisted that they had a role in upping the value of the land for squatting on it unmindful of the fact that government has injected all kinds of investments to make the place what it is today. This is the kind of “birth right” attitude which will surely fire up those chosen by DSWD personnel as recipients of the transfers. Then, there is the question of how the DSWD will determine the “poorest of the poor” given the highly charged, highly politicized situation on the ground where every Tom, Dick and Harry and every barangay official will pressure, if not cajole, the census takers to put them on the list. If Secretaries Abad and Soliman are minded they should look at the experience of Hurricane Katrina in the US or the so-called bolsas program in Mexico and some other South American countries. While some success may have been attributed to the transfer program, a lot more problems than solutions cropped up in the long run, the most graphic being its unsustainability as a stand alone operation. Which is why we have always advocated that instead of this outright doles the funds be channeled to make work programs where the recipients sweat for the cash, be more productive and stand taller as a result.

The other reallocations. Then, there is the question of reallocating the NFA rice procurement budget of about P7 to 8 billion again in favor of the so-called DSWD rice subsidy initiative. This is on top of the existing budget of close to a billion pesos embedded in the present DSWD allocation. WOW! And what particular competence does the DSWD has in rice procurement that cannot be worked out with NFA? If this is not classic favoritism I don’t know what is. OK, granted NFA has been fingered as a kind of budgetary blackhole, is that enough reason to suddenly cut off its procurement program and transfer it to an agency which has nary an experience in this kind of undertaking? I don’t think so. This smacks of something other than transparency and competence and is likely to be another unmitigated waste if P-Noy does not watch out. Which may be the reason NFA Administrator Lito Banayo is up in arms against the whole enterprise but Abad seems to be getting the upper hand on this one. What I am hearing is that Abad is doing this in part because of fear that Banayo who is identified with Sen. Chiz Escudero (remember the Noy-Bi operation) will suddenly be on top of a politically potent, not to mention a potential windfall which can presumably empower the Noy-Bi group even more.

Then, there is the cutback in the budget of the Department of Foreign Affairs which will definitely impact on that agency’s capacity to service the growing and essentially more complex problems affecting Filipinos overseas. But that is another story which in time will expose the highly politicized atmosphere under which this first P-Noy budget has been crafted. –Jonathan De la Cruz, Daily Tribune