(Eagle News) — Senator Koko Pimentel on Thursday, Sept. 20, called out the House of Representatives for passing a motion that voided a bill aimed at abolishing the Road Board.
According to Pimentel, such a move to void House Bill 7436 which the Senate adopted on Sept. 12 was “legally questionable.”
In adopting the House bill instead of the Senate’s version, Senate bill 1620, the Senate essentially did away with the need for a bicameral conference to reconcile what were supposed to be different versions of the bill.
“The lower house cannot just inform us later that they changed their minds and tell us the House version has ceased to exist anymore,” Pimentel said, calling the move “legally questionable.”
He said in the first place, the Senate adopted the House bill “already because we wanted immediate passage of a law addressing the Road Board.”
“What we continue to have instead is an agency ridden with corruption and inefficiency. COA flagged the Board for such ills in its scathing 2017 report, precisely the reason why we sped up the measure to legislate the Board’s necessary demise,” he said.
Among the findings, Pimentel said, was that “out of the 391 programmed projects for CY 2017, 122 projects costing P3,693,507,726.61 are still on-going, 78 projects costing P1,457,525,203.01 have not been started while 106 projects costing P3,738,548,564.38 were not yet implemented and obligated due to the slow procurement process and failure to adequately coordinate with other government agencies and public utility corporations at the early planning stage of project implementation.”
Pimentel said in addition, 121 other projects programmed in previous years with a total budget of nearly P1.316 billion “have yet to be started.”
He said the P3.97-billion National Road Lighting Program (NRLP) was also “placed in limbo” because the board “did not possess the technical capability to implement” it.
“Let’s not be sidetracked and distracted. The signing of a law abolishing the Road Board should remain a priority,” Pimentel said.
