Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 30) – The House contingent to the bicameral conference committee is seeking to restore the slashed budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) for 2023, House appropriations committee chairman and Ako Bicol Party-list Rep. Elizaldy Co said on Wednesday.
“Congress recognizes the important role the NTF-ELCAC plays to help end the country’s decades-long insurgency. Thus, we will convince our Senate counterparts in the bicameral conference committee to restore the agency’s proposed budget,” said Co, a member of the House bicam panel.
Co, however, urged the task force to speed up the completion of its projects. He said only 2% of the NTF-ELCAC’s projects were completed or are underway this year.
“A whopping 98% of the projects are still under the pre-procurement or procurement stage, and it’s already December,” he added.
The NTF-ELCAC’s proposed budget for 2023 was ₱10 billion, although it was reduced to ₱5 billion.
The task force notorious for red-tagging was allocated ₱19.2 billion in 2020, ₱16.44 in 2021, and ₱17.1 billion in 2022.
READ: Angara cries ‘pork’ as Senate demands report on NTF-ELCAC fund use
For House Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro, the NTF-ELCAC’s ₱10 billion budget should instead be realigned to the government’s cash assistance program for poor families.
“If the NTF-ELCAC budget is restored, it seems that Congress is rewarding incompetence and red-tagging… I hope that the House leadership would reconsider so that people will see that Congress would help them get aid rather than waste their hard earned money on red-taggers,” said Castro, a member of the often red-tagged Makabayan bloc.
“What’s more is that the NTF-ELCAC is not equipped for the projects that were placed under it. In 2021 only 48% of its projects under the Support for Barangay Development Program were completed, and in 2022 only 2% were completed,” the lawmaker added, as she criticized the task force’s low project completion rates.
READ: Angara: Only 26 out of over 2,300 NTF-ELCAC projects completed this year
