Andaya OKs bicam report on Road Board abolition
Credit to Author: GLEE JALEA| Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2018 16:33:06 +0000
House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. on Sunday said he is “positively responding” to the call of Sen. Miguel Zubiri to have both chambers of Congress meet in a conference to hammer out provisions on the abolition of the graft-tainted Road Board.
“Senator Zubiri’s proposal is the way forward, for both Houses to jointly cure the bill of its defects, instead of carelessly sending to the President a flawed and faulty one, which does not offer reforms but more of the same bad practices,” Andaya noted.
His move came just days after the House of Representatives heeded the call of President Rodrigo Duterte to abolish the Road Board, which oversees funds from the Motor Vehicle User’s Charge (MVUC).
“On the part of the House, we will designate the members of our contingent to the bicameral conference committee on our first session day next year, on January 14,” he said.
Andaya added that they will follow the President’s lead by crafting a version that will truly abolish the board and “move the spending of the MVUC collection from darkness into light.”
“The House advocates the 100-percent dismantling of the Road Board. We do not want its powers to be merely transferred to three secretaries who will in effect be Three Road Kings who can spend the MVUC at will,” he said.
The Senate approved Senate Bill 1620 on February 12, then adopted on September 12 the counterpart measure House Bill 7436 filed by then-speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, citing misappropriation of funds in the agency.
But on the same day, Andaya moved to rescind the measure.
As former Budget secretary under the Arroyo administration, he had been insisting that the call for the agency’s abolition would only transmit powers to “Three Powerful Road KingS” which will disburse the road users’ tax — the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
“We will ensure that all proceeds from the MVUC form part of the General Fund. We want to strip MVUC collection of its status as a hidden off-budget item that will be spent by one person in an untransparent way. We want itemized spending the people can see,” he said.
Andaya added that non-road use activities like garbage collection would have to be stricken off the spending menu.
“If [the House and Malacañang have] now resolved to abolish the Road Board like we do in the Senate, we can recall the enrolled copies sent to Malacañang and reconvene the bicameral committee to further strengthen the abolition of the corruption-riddled agency,” Zubiri said on Saturday.
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