Recto: Replace ‘pork’ with BEEF

As national distaste for “pork” becomes more evident, a healthier “BEEF” may take its place on the menu of priority government projects, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said over the weekend.

BEEF is short for Basic Education Enhancement Fund, into which a huge portion of the original P26-billion allocation for pork or Priority Development Assistance Fund in the 2014 budget program should go, according to Recto.

e said the education sector needs huge financing for it to be able to reach global standards.

“But seriously, the idea is for education to hog, pardon the pun, whatever will become of PDAF, should Congress decide to take it out of the budget,” Recto said.

Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara is also pushing for a similar realignment of the fund.

Angara said half of the funds should go to projects intended to improve the country’s educational system.

Senate Resolution No. 202, filed by Angara last week, proposes to appropriate half of the PDAF of the senators, amounting to some P2.4 billion annually, for public schools and state universities and colleges for scholarships, classrooms, computers, teaching training and other activities.

“Instead of subjecting taxpayers’ money to corruption and grave abuse, we should instead utilize these funds in significant economic and social services. Education is one of the sectors of greatest need in our society,” Angara said.

Recto said that Congress would now have to find a way to realign the PDAF to schools, computers, laboratory equipment and even kitchens “that will serve meals to malnourished pupils.”

e said spending on education “gives the best social ROI return-oninvestment

“All development blueprints are one in saying that investing in education is the best building block for progress,” Recto said.

Recto noted that the 2014 proposed budget for the Department of Education can make possible a never before seen classroom building and teacher hiring spree.

owever, there are still several areas in the education sector that need to be addressed, he said.

“For example, according to DepEd itself, half of the 38,503 public elementary schools lack computers. When it comes to math and science laboratories, although there is a P2.6-billion proposed allocation for these in 2014, we’re still far from the halfway mark in providing all schools with one,” Recto said.

Recto also said the health condition of students must also be a concern of the government, considering that a significant number of them are malnourished.

“DepEd says almost four percent of Grade one to four students are severely wasted’ and almost 11 percent are wasted,” Recto said quoting the words of Education Secretary Armin Luistro during his presentation to the Senate last week.

Recto also noted that the 10 libraries that the DepEd intends to build next year are definitely not enough and so the realigned PDAF could help in financing even more libraries.

Recto said the enrollment of the first batch of 658,816 Grade 11 students in 2015 is expected to create a “huge classroom, teacher and textbooks need.”

Recto said that in spite of the laudable plan of the DepEd to hire 33,194 teachers, build 43,183 classrooms and purchase 42.6 million textbooks next year, “small pockets of shortages will remain.”

“And this can be erased by a re-channeled PDAF. So that when taxpayers ask Congress, where’s the pork? It can reply, here’s the BEEF,” he said,

Angara, meanwhile, cited a Commission on igher Education report showing only 34 percent of public higher education institutions with adequate facilities.