ACT Joins People’s Initiative to Abolish Pork Barrel

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Region 7 Union, a registered public school teachers’ union in Central Visayas with more than 5,000 members is “ready to mobilize its members not only to sign, but to gather signatures in their locality.

“One year after the Million People March, Filipinos have more reasons to join and sign the People’s Initiative to Abolish Pork Barrel system in the country”, said Regional President Antonia Maamo Lim, ACT Region 7 Union said.

Lim said despite Supreme Court’s ruling that Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) and Disbursement Acceleration Project (DAP) are unconstitutional, bigger pork barrel scandals have erupted, the latest of which is the discovery of hidden “pork barrel” funds in the 2014 national budget.

Lim added an audio recordings of an “executive session” of the House of Representatives with Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chair Patricia Licuanan tackling the implementation of PDAF through the scholarship program under Commission on Higher Education (CHED),”.

So Lim crticized all lawmakers saying , “It is already apparent that the lawmakers are there not because of their desire to serve the country by crafting laws that will address the needs of the Filipino people, and can’t even enact a law that will give all public school teachers a decent and humane compensation,” Lim added.

Lim stressed that the ACT teachers have the reason why they joined the People’s Initiative, which was earlier introduced by former Chief Justice Renato Puno, is a Constitutional provision wherein people can enact a law without the participation of the legislative and executive departments.

She added that through the proposed measure, signature coming from at least 10% or about 5.4 million among the total registered voters of the country, with 3 % from each district must be reached.

According to Lim, it will then be followed by the signature verification of the COMELEC before a referendum is to be called wherein people will vote either YES or NO in a law being proposed then a simple majority of YES votes is needed for the proposed bill to be enacted.

“We are aghast with the legislators and government officials involved in the perpetuation of the pork barrel system despite the ruling of the Supreme Court, and they keep on telling us that there is no money available to cover for our salary increase and yet they continue to enjoy the illegal lump sum allocations, they are very greedy., they just want to enrich themselves at the expense of the people”, Lim added.

Rep. Tinio’s bill aiming to increase our meagre salary is still sleeping in the Congress,” added Ms. Lim.

Lim is referring to House Bill 245 which aims to increase the salary of public school teachers from P18, 549 to P25, 000 per month and the said bill is still under the committee level citing the unavailability of funds as the major hindrance for its approval., she said.

“Teachers in the region, under the leadership of ACT Region 7 Union is one with people in gathering 5.4 million signatures scrapping the pork barrel system via people’s initiative. Surely, the people will win this battle,” Lim said.