Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon deplored Thursday the Duterte administration’s skewed 2022 national budget priorities leaving “in limbo” crucial funding for vaccine supply to contain the deadly coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) contagion, even as it allocated P280 billion for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
The opposition lawmaker lamented that the 2022 national budget, endorsed by Malacañang for early approval by Congress “left in limbo funds for Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, health workers’ special risk allowance [SRA].”
Drilon stressed the need for the booster shots, reminding that vaccine efficacy wanes after six months, leaving health-care workers vulnerable by October.
In a news statement, the Minority Leader took issue on how the funds for Covid-19 vaccine booster shots and the special risk allowance of medical frontliners can “remain in limbo while the NTF-ELCAC is certain to receive P28 billion funding” in the proposed 2022 National Expenditures Program (NEP).
He stressed the acquisition and inoculation of booster shots is “made necessary by the fact that the efficacy of vaccines wanes after six months, leaving the health-care workers, who were among the first who were vaccinated in the country, vulnerable.”
The senator wondered whether “we will ever reach herd immunity when the vaccines’ efficacy wanes after 6 months,” noting this means that health workers vaccinated in March would be vulnerable again by October as the effect of the vaccine wanes.
Drilon stressed the need for the Duterte administration to ensure funding is set aside, saying Dapat po itong lagyan ng tiyak na pondo, this being part of the unprogrammed funds is symbolic of the government’s priorities.”
He added that funding for NTF-ELCAC is part of the programmed appropriation, while the funds for Covid-19 booster shots in the unprogrammed fund, noting that the unprogrammed funds may only be released when total revenues exceeded the target or through loan or aid.
Drilon denounced that while the funding for the booster shots were left to chance as it is in the unprogrammed fund, the funding for NTF-ELCAC is guaranteed in the NEP.
The Minority Leader reminded that in the face of these challenges, the proposed investment on the health and social services sectors is grossly inadequate.
He recalled that the Duterte administration is targeting to vaccinate 70 percent of the population by the end of the year and 90 percent to reach herd immunity by 2022, but the senator noted that as of September 5, only 15 million individuals have been fully vaccinated.
Drilon added: “Only when we effectively manage the threat of Covid-19 can economic activity resume. But how can we do that if we continue to disregard as we have disregarded in this budget the health sector?”
Moreover, the senator said DOH only ranks fourth in the departments that will receive the biggest budget in 2022, with P242 billion behind the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of the Interior and Local Government that will receive P686.1 billion and P250.5 billion, respectively.
“Billions are allocated for intelligence and confidential funds but we cannot even bother to take care of the health workers by funding their Special Risk Allowance,” Drilon decried, adding “There is no line item in the budget for hazard pay. Not a single peso is allocated for our medical frontliners’ meals, accommodation, and transportation allowance.”
At the same time, Drilon described the P5 trillion proposed national budget the “most detached from reality” for prioritizing funding anti-insurgency against the backdrop of rising cases of Covid-19 in the country due to the spread of the Delta variant.
“For the past 23 years that I have been analyzing the budget, the 2022 budget, is the most detached from reality and has the most skewed priorities,” Drilon decried. “Are we saying that insurgency has become a bigger, more dangerous threat than Covid-19 and its fast-mutating variant? Why is anti-insurgency a budget priority for the next fiscal year? Are we saying that the NTF-ELCAC is more needed than our education sector?”
The Minority Leader wondered why, amid rising incidence of hunger, the proposed budget does not provide funds for social amelioration program or “ayuda,” while the budget for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program barely increased, prodding the Duterte administration to “provide economic stimulus in these times when our people are in such dire.”