House panel to issue show cause order vs Diokno
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 08:16:04 +0000
THE House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations will issue a show cause order against Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno to explain why he failed to attend hearings on the alleged irregularities in his department’s allocation of government funds.
The panel agreed to the motion of Leyte 3rd District Rep. Vicente Veloso on Tuesday for a show cause order after newly installed committee chairman Rolando Andaya Jr. said that Diokno’s absence in the public inquiries was in “utter disrespect” of the proceedings.
“We need to issue a show cause order for him to explain why he should not be cited for contempt,” Veloso said.
“It is lamentable that the DBM secretary continues to deprive us of the opportunity to question him directly on several issues hounding the DBM. We have provided him the proper forum to clear his name of any wrongdoing,” Andaya said.
The investigation took off from last week’s discovery that Diokno allegedly revised provisions in the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) that allowed other agencies to transfer the bidding authority to them under big-ticket infrastructure projects.
Diokno was also accused of inserting P75 billion in the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) under the 2019 national budget and facilitating P81 million worth of government contracts to favor the firm of his daughter’s in-laws.
Diokno snobbed the hearing for the fourth time since his heated exchange with Andaya, Minority Leader Danilo Suarez, and other lawmakers during his question hour last December on the issue of irregularities under the P3.757-trillion budget for 2019. GLEE JALEA
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