P500,000.00 prov’l autonomy budget

HAPPY WEEKEND
By Gina Dizon

From the P15 million budget for regional autonomy with its spending term to end by December this year, each of the six provinces of the Cordillera is allotted P500, 000 for their respective consultation and information activities for the drafting of the third organic act for Cordillera regional autonomy.

A half million peso allotment per province would then be equal to P3.5 million pesos for all the six provinces of Apayao, Abra, Kalinga, Benguet, Ifugao, Mountain Province and Baguio City.
And the rest of the P11.5 million…where will it go? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind with Regional Development Council (RDC) chair and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director Juan Ngalob calling the shots in how the autonomy money is allocated.

Back to the P500,000 allocation. Is this amount enough to reach out to some 150,000 voters spread out in 10 municipalities and 144 barangays in Mountain Province for example? Here in Mountain Province, this amount of half a million pesos means one consultation only per municipality.

The consultation on regional autonomy shall be done in a general manner with representatives per barangay and sectoral groups attending, as how the Mountain Province sub-committee on the drafting committee chaired by civic leader Franklin Odsey has come up with in their recent meeting. Forget about mass-wide barangay and sectoral consultations. Obviously, such budget amounting to only P500, 000 pesos can only reach one consultation per town with a limited number of participants even.

A quick calculation brings up to P50, 000 per town/consultation from the half million allocation allotted by RDC to provinces. Less secretariat and travel fees for facilitators including coordination expenses, leaves something like 15,000 to 20,000 allotment for meals per municipality. Anyone can come up with a quick calculation how many mouths to feed for P20,000 pesos only. Participants who attend trainings in posh hotels and resorts and even meetings know what P20, 000 means.

That is, one cannot gather people, get them out from their work and homes and families and not serve lunch with a piece of meat or some veggies or bilis (dried fish) and rice. While it is cultural to feed people during community gatherings, the activity has a P15 million budget to spend to reach the widest number of people as much as possible. Of course, meals are one of the major items to be budgeted aside from secretariat, travels, and coordination expenses.

So there it goes. A simple calculation with 144 barangays multiplied by at least P7, 000 per pig and one more to feed the entire barangay will come up with one million pesos. That is less rice, fuel, veggies, salt, kape and asukal. Add hundred thousands more for sectoral meetings and more for travels and logistics for operations and secretariat work.

An allotment of at least P1.5 to 2 million per province from the P15 million budget is then wanting to make this autonomy drive more intensive and broad than the previous consultation-information drives done in the past. It is a question if this third autonomy attempt has learned something or not from the previous two failed ones. Otherwise, this autonomy campaign is being done just to spend the 15 million pesos! Period.

With lack of information cited as a major reason why the previous autonomy attempts failed in the two plebiscites as noted in a RDC survey which noted that 40% don’t know what autonomy is all about, RDC’s very act of allotting a measly amount now from the total P15 million autonomy budget is remarkably absurd.

An honest to goodness information drive means barangay and sectoral consultations in mass attendance where every voter is expected to be informed and say what he or she thinks about regional autonomy to find incorporation in the proposed organic act.

It is another issue to discuss where the media comes in. With a P15 million budget, how much is allotted for media purposes? Is the radio utilized? How consistent are the radio plugs? How about the print media in the local and regional level? Saw only once an advertisement on regional autonomy in regional papers. Haven’t come across stories consistently written to spur a government led-autonomy campaign.

The autonomy drive was only trying hard to be visible during the celebration of the Cordillera Month last July with government staff doing an ethnic hataw and Baguio based students doing a debate on regional autonomy. Aside from these, there was not a pronounced celebration or a visible autonomy campaign in the provinces. Obviously, the P15 million budget is wanting of visibility to get evangelized in the provinces.

Now, RDC is scrambling and rushing to spend P15 million before the year ends. Such a big amount of money which should have been spent earlier or towards the 2nd quarter of the year and less money left to spend in the latter part of the year.

But anyway, with all these information and consultation activities for autonomy, are the people really interested to have regional autonomy in the first place? For those who are already closed with the idea of a regional autonomy, the road is open for those who may be wanting of information or persuasion. And this is where the P15 million should be spent ngarud to reach the remotest barangay because in the first place those who will vote are the people and not only government personnel doing the ethnic hataw or RDC officials and NEDA staff and pro-autonomy advocates to say yes to autonomy.

While such is the question, political leader Rafael Wasan asked during an earlier meeting chaired by organic act drafting committee chairman and Baguio Mayor Mauricio Domogan, why RDC is the only one budgeting the autonomy fund. The rest is history as Wasan asked further how the initial P33 million autonomy fund was spent to which RDC Chair/NEDA Director Ngalob said the answer is posted in the RDC website!