By Jess Diaz and Paolo Romero (The
Philippine Star) | Updated September 7, 2017 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — A day after
giving the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) a P1,000 budget, leaders of the
House of Representatives said yesterday they are willing to restore its funding
to P351 million for 2018, provided it could resolve the issues and
controversies hounding the agency before the end of the budget process.
“But until then, they will have
P1,000,” Davao City Rep. Karlo Nograles, appropriations committee chairman,
said.
Sen. Sherwin
Gatchalian appealed to the House to reconsider its decision to drastically
cut the ERC budget as he cautioned his fellow legislators of its potentially
devastating impact on the stability of the power sector.
“There was a general sentiment among
House members that the ERC really needs to fix a lot of problems besetting
their office, so the Speaker and the House saw it fit to give them just a
thousand pesos for next year,” he said without elaborating.
Zamboanga City Rep. Celso Lobregat,
appropriations committee vice chairman in charge of the budgets of energy agencies,
said it was Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez who asked him to seek a P1,000 funding
for ERC.
He did not explain why Alvarez
wanted to cripple the agency by giving it such a small budget, which is not
even enough for the cost-of-living allowance of a single employee.
However, it is believed that the
House leadership’s move was in support of President Duterte’s wish for the
abolition of ERC.
The President has repeatedly said if
he could not abolish the regulatory agency, he would ask Congress to deny it
funding.
He has also asked ERC chairman Jose
Vicente Salazar and all commissioners to resign.
Malacañang has suspended the ERC
chief for alleged insubordination. It has asked the four commissioners to
explain their recent “expensive trips” allegedly funded by entities they
regulate.
Ironically, it was Duterte who
proposed a P351-million budget for ERC for 2018.
The proposal is part of the
P3.8-trillion 2018 outlay the President submitted to Congress last July 24.
For his part, Gatchalian, who chairs
the Senate committee on energy, expressed concern the massive budget cut would
severely hamper the ERC’s ability to fulfill its functions and send a bad
signal to energy investors and breed uncertainty in terms of electricity supply
and power rates.
“It would be better to aggressively
pursue administrative and criminal charges against erring ERC officials instead
of punishing the entire agency as a whole for the sins of the higher-ups,”
Gatchalian said.
He noted that several cases against
Salazar and the ERC commissioners are pending before various bodies.
The senator also sought the support
of House members for his Senate Bill 490, also known as the ERC Governance Act
of 2017, seeking reforms at the ERC.
Road
Board must stay
The opposition bloc in the House
also called on Alvarez to reconsider his plans of abolishing the graft-ridden
Road Board, saying the move could be too harsh despite the presence of
so-called bad eggs in the agency.
“While we recognize the good
intentions of the Speaker, we would like to reiterate the importance of the
Road Board in carrying out functions that are beneficial to the motoring
public,” House Minority Leader Danilo Suarez maintained.
Suarez, among the authors of the
Road Board charter, said the Road Board was the “product of a well-crafted and
well-intentioned law, but like a majority of our laws, the real problem is in
the implementing agency.” – With Delon Porcalla, Artemio Dumlao
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