HOUSE Majority Leader Martin Romualdez on Monday admitted that holding a special session for the passage of the bill extending the Bayanihan to Recover as One law or the Bayanihan 2, which expires on June 30, is now getting dimmer.
As of Monday, Romualdez said there are still no instructions from Malacañang on the proposed extension of the Bayahinan 2.
“Athough that was in the agenda last week in our visit to Malacañang, we were not able to take that up, such there is no clarity in moving forward. As we know Bayanihan 2 will expire on June 30 so it’s looking quite tight. The likelihood of an extension is becoming dimmer as this point,” said Romualdez.
“We are also a bit short on time for special session because we, usually, [in] this instance would await for proclamation by Malacañang to call a special session. We need [a] declaration or certification of urgency and we have not had that yet,” he added.
For her part, House Committee on Economic Affairs Chairman Sharon Garin said parts of the Bayanihan 2 have been included in the Bayanihan 3 or the proposed Bayanihan to Arise As One Act.
“Technically, you can’t extend something that expired. But Congress has the power to legislate to that effect and we have extension of Bayanihan 2 in Bayanihan 3,” Garin added. As of May 31, about 9 billion in unobligated funds for critical pandemic response and recovery programs under the Bayanihan are about to expire on June 30.
Clamor from groups
Health workers, economists and civil society groups on Monday pressed their call to extend the effectivity of Bayanihan 2 in order to sustain the pandemic response and allow the country to flatten the Covid-19 curve.
Action for Economic Reforms (AER) Coordinator Filomeno Sta. Ana III expressed concern that Bayanihan 2’s impending expiration would leave a lot of pandemic-related programs without appropriate funding for the rest of the year.
This includes some P6.6 billion appropriated for health human resource and laboratory tests. Other appropriations set to expire include contact tracing funds and support for digital education materials, programs for affected farmers and workers, and response and recovery interventions.
“This time, it is an imperative and an absolute necessity to spend big and ensure that the spending is responsive to flattening the pandemic. The 2021 budget is not a budget that meets the health objectives,” Sta. Ana said in a statement.
“To be brutally frank, the 2021 GAA is a budget that kills people. Less spending for pandemic response and more spending on bullets. Exercise leadership and use political capital to have a pro-health, pro-relief, and pro-jobs budget for the remaining two years of his [Duterte’s] term,” he added.
AER as well as the Healthcare Professionals Alliance Against Covid-19 (HPAAC) and the COVID19 Action Network (CAN) said the call for fiscal response has been amplified by the alarming increase of infections in the countryside.
Dr. Katerina Abiertas, a municipal health worker from Samar and a member of HPAAC, and CAN coordinator Dr. Eddie Dorotan said in a recent briefing that Covid-19 cases are rising in areas outside Metro Manila or the National Capital Region (NCR).
Abiertas and Dorotan said the funds, especially the P6.6 billion, could go a long way to help health workers continue treating Covid-19 patients in the provinces.
Transmissions
Efforts to respond to the pandemic are crucial in order to prevent further spread of Covid-19, especially amid reports that the Delta variant has already reached Philippine shores.
“High transmission, especially of a more dangerous variant, would still necessitate restrictions, which of course would constrain the economy,” Sta. Ana said.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua told the BusinessMirror over the weekend that the Delta variant could lead to another spike in Covid-19 cases. This will also reduce the economy’s chances to recover.
Chua said quarantine restrictions and the fall in consumption translate to a total income loss of around P1.04 trillion in 2020 or an average of P2.8 billion a day.
Quarantine restrictions led to an average annual income loss of P23,000 per worker. However, this average masks wide differences across sectors and jobs, and some workers are hit much harder, especially those who lost their jobs, Chua stressed.
Nonetheless, he said the government’s response this year has improved visits to public transport stations to a contraction of 40 percent this year from a decline of 80 percent last year.
More Filipinos, Chua said, have also started going back to work. Those going to work is only down by 25 percent this year compared to a decline of over 40 percent last year.
Before it went on sine die adjournment, the House approved on second reading House Bill 9538, seeking to extend again the release, obligation and disbursement of funds of Republic Act 11494 or “Bayanihan 2” until the end of 2021.
‘Extend the Bayanihan’
For his part, Deputy Speaker and Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez is urging President Duterte to call Congress to a special session to extend Bayanihan 2.
“We have to extend the effectivity of the law again so that the government can spend whatever remains of the millions of funds we have appropriated for pandemic response,” he said.
“Unless we pass another extension bill, the unspent funds would no longer be available,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said a special session would also give Congress the opportunity to approve the proposed Bayanihan 3 round of financial assistance to the poor and other sectors suffering from the pandemic.
Bayanihan 2 funds
Malacañang is confident the remaining P8 billion under Bayanihan to Recover as One Act (Bayanihan 2) will be obligated before the law expires later this week.
“So it appears even if we reach the end of the month, we could obligate the remaining eight billion remaining fund under Bayanihan 2,” Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in an online press briefing on Monday.
Last week, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) revealed that about P18.4 billion of Bayanihan 2 have yet to be obligated by concerned government agencies.
This prompted some lawmakers to push for the possible extension of the effectivity of Bayanihan 2.
DBM expressed its reservation over the proposal saying it may encourage the affected government agencies to be lax in the implementation of their novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) response programs.
Roque said currently, the Palace sees no need to pass the pending Bayanihan to Arise and One bill (Bayanihan 3), which allocates P401 billion additional funding for the government’s Covid response.
“There is still no action on that because the economic team want to know if there are still remaining [funds from the] 2020 budget, 2021 budget and the Bayanihan 2,” Roque said.
Last week, Duterte met with lawmakers to discuss both the Bayanihan 2 and Bayanihan 3.
Labor impact
Labor coalition Nagkaisa is pushing for the extension of the Bayanihan 2 as well as the passage of Bayanihan 3 so its funds could be used for “pro-labor” policies.
“As we continue to confront the Covid-19 pandemic, it is important for the Duterte government to ensure that we have the institutional means to protect working people while we struggle to achieve mass vaccination. A genuine bayanihan spirit rules demands that no Filipino is left behind,” Nagkaisa said in a statement.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) admitted that the non-passage of the Bayanihan 3 will be a “set back” in the implementation of the National Employment Recovery Strategy (NERS) to help pandemic-affected workers.
It noted that the funding for its P24-billion wage subsidy program is included in the Bayanihan 3.
The program aims to save jobs and promote employee retention, by provide workers with a monthly subsidy of P 8,000 for up to three months.
“This setback would likely be resolved during the NERS Task Force’s next assembly,” DOLE said in a statement last Monday.
Image courtesy of Roy Domingo