By Angie M. Rosales
09/30/2010
The Senate uncovered what is likely another diversion scam from the Department of Agriculture (DA) budget similar to the P728-million fertilizer fund anomaly but this time by a far bigger amount of P5 billion that should have been earmarked for farm-to-market road projects but instead was suspected to have been used as campaign money during the last elections.
“These are releases which appear to be election-related, like the fertilizer scam (in 2004), the funds were released to RFUs (regional field units). This is questionable since the releases were made in only two days, Feb. 22 and March 23, 2010, over P4.86 billion spread out in 13 regional offices of DA,†Senate finance committee chairman Sen. Franklin Drilon said.
We will try to find out where these funds went, said to be for farm-to-market roads and various infrastructure projects, Drilon added.
“Sen. (Juan Miguel) Zubiri, during the hearing, did bring out the fact that there were apparently dealers and brokers who would offer these amounts to the LGUs with certain cuts and certain commissions.
According to Zubiri, he brought this to the attention of the officialdom of DA at that time but nothing was done. He brought it to the attention, according to him, of (then) Secretary (Arthur) Yap,†Drilon told reporters in a press conference after hearing the proposed 2011 budget of the DA.
Zubiri, during the said proceedings, demanded a detailed accounting of all infrastructure funding of the DA for the past three years after citing a Commission on Audit (CoA) report that for farm to market projects alone, P5.2 billion were not “efficiently and effectively implemented.â€
“I would request your department to submit to this committee before plenary the complete list of farm to market roads that were given out in the last three years, the complete list, exact locations so that we can do an inventory of all these projects,†Zubiri told Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala during the hearing.
“The CoA cited irregularities on FMR (farm-to-market roads) worth over P37 million and there are several of them,†he added.
The senator has in his possession affidavits from several mayors of different provinces claiming that they were approached by fixers in the department to push for such projects from which the fixers want to collect 30 percent in cash from the project cost.
The DA has allotted a total of P2.5 billion for repair and rehabilitation and construction of FMR for 2011 or a 61.86 percent reduction from P6.554 billion in 2010.
“If we want to improve the performance of our agriculture sector we must weed out corruption in the implementation of infrastructure projects which has been the milking cow of unscrupulous officials of the past administrations,†Zubiri warned.
Zubiri said senators have managed to secure documents indicating the release of funds amounting to P3.6 billion last Feb. 22 to various RFUs and another P1.24 billion on March 23.
“This is a little unusual because in that short period of time, at least P4.8 billion was released to the RFUs. We will be looking closely into this and what projects were executed pursuant to this because these are very vague descriptions,†he said.
“It simply requests the issuance of advice of sub-allotments to DA-RFUs for the implementation of other infrastructure projects. I wish to emphasize that these funds were already in the DA and that is why it is now the issuance of what they call sub-allotment advice. There were already SAROs (special allotment release order) released for this previously,†he added.
The P3.6 billion was taken from the GMA Rice Program for calendar year 2010, under SARO No. 10-0000432 dated last Feb. 10.
“In other words, the amount was released to the DA by the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) last Feb. 10 and again on Feb. 22, these were cascaded to the RFUs. Similarly, the amount of P1.24 billion again was under the GMA Rice Program for calendar year 2010 for capital outlay which means infrastructure, this was covered by SARO No. E-10-001302 dated March 17 2010,†he said.
“So there was apparently haste in immediately cascading these funds to the RFUs. We still have to look into this because it appears that there are very uneven distributions,†according to Zubiri.
Zubiri cited as an example, allotment for Region 6, which is a rice-producing region, of P288 million but for ARMM, P436 million was released. Similarly, on March 22, in Region 12, P267.6 million was released to the RFUs,†Drilon said. - Philippine Tribune
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