Partylist Candidate: PDAF can Help Solve Lack of Budget of BFP

Because the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) lacks of the needed budget, several municipalities in Cebu still have no fire trucks that could be used to respond to in case of fire incidents, but a lawmaker said the congressmen can help solve the problem.

Partylist Representative Arnel Ty, who is also a Filipino-Chinese fire brigade volunteer, said the lawmakers can help solve the problem about the scarcity of firefighting facilities and equipment with their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

Ty said portions of the senators and congressmen’s PDAF that are allocated for public infrastructure can be spent to build fire stations in towns that still do not have one.

Almost half of the province’ 44 municipalities still have no fire trucks and these towns depends only to fire equipment of the neighboring local government units in case fire will break in their territorial jurisdictions.

The nationwide figures showed that four out of every 10 municipalities still do not have a single fire station.

“We are appealing to our colleagues in Congress to use some of their PDAF allocations to support the construction of fire stations and the acquisition of fire trucks, for the benefit of municipalities that still do not have any firefighting capability,” Ty said.

He added that the lawmakers can also use part of their PDAF, which is allocated for peace and order to spend it for the purchase of fire trucks and other firefighting gear for the use of the fire fighters.

Each of the congressmen has P70 million budget every year or a total of P210 million for the three-year term of a lawmaker and each of the senators have P200 million PDAF allocations.

Ty said the senators can also help so much in acquiring more fire stations and fire trucks as they have larger PDAF allocations, and because they have no specific constituencies, they can put up fire stations in any municipality.

Republic Act 7160 provides that every municipality shall have at least one fire station with adequate personnel, firefighting capabilities and equipment, but 21 years had passed after the enactment of the Local Government Code and still 613 out of 1,502 municipalities nationwide still have no fire trucks.

Ty said the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) would need about P4.3 billion to provide one fire truck to each of the 613 municipalities.