MANILA, Philippines – The members of opposition committee in Congress appeal to deduct the conditional cash transfer (CCT) fund for the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DWSD). They made their request despite their prior statements telling they will boycott the deliberation on the Php1.816 trillion national budgets of the government.
Albay representative Edcel Lagman (house minority leader) and Zambales representative Ma. Milagros Magsaysay (house deputy minority leader) urged the administration to lessen the 39.5 billion funds for CCT and transfer the rest to other government agencies that needed additional funding.
The two officials mentioned Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA ) among those agencies worth to receive additional funds for next year.
“We should give more funds to agencies that generate jobs for Filipinos like the TESDA instead of giving more on dole-outs.”
TESDA is responsible in providing 1.2 billion jobs to Filipinos this year.
In addition, Magsaysay said the government should grant a bigger fund for TESDA for next year considering the satisfactory management of the current agency leader TESDA Director General Joel Villanueva.
So far, the approved amount of funding for TESDA by Malacañang is only Php2.74 billion from the original Php3.5 billion requested by the agency for next year. This denotes a Php98 million deduction when compared to this year’s Php2.872 billion budget allotments.
