CEBU CITY — The chair of an obscure House of Representatives’ committee on Millennium Development Goals periodically issues a “battle cry”. Rep. Imelda Marcos urges Filipinos to close the gap in meeting MDG targets. Imelda and Millennium Development — what?
MDGs are not shorthand for pork barrel. They’re more important than a Libingan ng mga Bayani funeral for a dictator.
To ease “extreme poverty”, the Philippines and 188 other countries unanimously adopted eight MDGs at the 2000 Millennium Summit after People Power II booted out a soused Estrada regime.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came into Malacanang pledging to meet MDG targets. These would free people from hunger, disease, and enlarge freedoms.
Measurable indicators were stitched into the goals. “MDGs’ chief appeal is they convert high rhetoric into hard numbers,” the Economist noted.
“We should have achieved MDGs under the (Arroyo) regime,” says the study Winning the Numbers, Losing the War. Overseas Filipino Workers remittances topped $16 to $18 billion yearly. Skills abounded. Despite reckless waste, ecosystems held, albeit tenuously. We flunked.”
Today, “the Philippines is in a worse poverty situation in 2010 than when it started on the MDGs.” Prevalence of underweight children under five is “comparable to Sub-Saharan Africa”, the last nutrition survey reports. Only three out of 10 drink potable water in the Autonomous Regions of Muslim Mindanao.
“Hello Garci” and related scams interlocked. GMA today delays final reckoning on her graft-ridden regime. Imelda Marcos and heirs haven’t returned the “New Society” loot.
Sandiganbayan, last April, ordered Imelda to return P12 million that ex-President Ferdinand Marcos illegally withdrew from National Food Authority. The anti-graft court found Marcos had diverted that sum into a private Security Bank account in 1983.
President Benigno Aquino and other world leaders must report in 2015 if we’ve met MDG targets. We lag badly on MDGs 1, 2 and 5.
Goal 1 would halve poverty. But the pace of poverty reduction bogged down. Social Weather Station reports in the first quarter of 2011 an estimated 4.1 million families “experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months”.
Goal 2 pledged “universal primary education”. But 17 out of every 100 kids are not enrolled. Dropouts persist. “Government spends less on education than Asian neighbors. Another generation of poorly-educated Filipinos is emerging from the wings.”
Goal 5 would tamp down deaths of women at childbirth to 52 from today’s 162. (Compare that to Malaysia’s mortality rate of 17.) Proportion of births, attended by health personnel, should increase from 63 to 80 percent.
“Children have the right to live beyond age 5…But large numbers in (poor homes) start dying after they are born….” Were these deaths preventable?
That’s the core issue in the clash between local officials and Interior & Local Government Sec. Jesse Robredo over the 20 percent Local Development Fund. Magasaysay awardee Robredo says LDF is the “most abused” budget item.
No, protested League of Municipalities national vice president Dumanjug Mayor Nelson Garcia and Bohol Gov. Edgar Chato. The LDF is not a mini pork barrel of local officials. So they’ll challenge Robredo’s DILG circular memo 2010-138 before the Supreme Court.
What is the LDF? How did this trust fund come about? And what is its track record?
At the 1972 UN Environment Conference in Stockholm, the Philippines and 113 other countries proposed a “20-20 Pact”. It would earmark 20 percent of resources for the poorest, and address needs like: nutrition, health care, medicine, potable water, sanitation, primary schooling, etc.
Sen. Aquilino Pimental wove that 20 percent vital safety net concept into the Local Government Code.
Politicians converted the LDF into their mini-pork barrels, as successive COA audits found, we noted in October 2007.
Fifth class town Aloguinsan in Cebu splurged P540,000 for a live concert and a dance-breakout, COA said. Borbon town granted P24,000 to each department head. Jagna in Bohol fittered away P1.85 million in LDF resources for heavy equipment.
Cotabato City appropriated P55 million under its LDF for three development projects. It spent P44.3 million — most of which went for creating jobs, not meeting basic human needs. Some 480 workers were “assigned/detailed at the 27 offices of that City. That chewed up P16.3 million.
Roberdo’s 2010 circular reinforces DILG August 1999 policies. These prohibit LDF from being used for underwriting “salaries, wages or overtime pay”.
They should also not underwrite “administrative expenses such as cash gifts, bonuses, food allowances, medical assistance, uniforms, supplies, meetings, communication, water and light, petroleum products, and the like”.
Junkets or lakbay-aral are out, Robredo says. “Travelling expenses, whether domestic of foreign” may not billed to the LDF. Neither may officials dip into the Fund for “registration fees in training, seminars], conferences or conventions.”
A new Performance Challenge Fund will instead provide half a billion pesos to 344 LGUs that provide counterparts from LDFs for essential projects. These range from rural health units, water and sanitation, to post-harvest facilities.
Local official, however, stubbornly insist on having their LDF pork barrels, Inquirer noted.
“These are all honest men,” says the old proverb. “But why can I not find my bag?”
