Oversight committee for intel funds
If you’re applying for the approval of, say, cosmetic products that have passed rigid testing from the food and drug offices in their countries of origin, don’t be too sure your products will breeze through the Food and Drug Administration.
Product testing by our own FDA could supposedly take months, even years, if you don’t do the following: • Bribe FDA officials by the millions. • Shower them with gifts on their birthdays, their children’s birthdays or wedding anniversaries and on Christmas.
• Pay for their travels abroad with business or firstclass accommodations, handsome amounts of pocket money included.
It’s a good thing those corrupt practices at the FDA have been brought to light in the Senate during a hearing on its budget.
Newly appointed FDA director general Samuel Zarate admitted before the Senate that there was an alarming backlog of applications in the agency.
Zarate assured the senators the backlog will be completely addressed by 2023. He said he, too, had heard of the irregularities in his agency.
Zarate doesn’t know this, but I was told one of his predecessors was reportedly able to buy an island in Palawan, thanks to the bribes given to him by big pharmaceutical firms.
Henceforth, the new FDA chief should prohibit all of its officials and employees from receiving gifts from outsiders during the Christmas season.
He should also disallow his subordinates from going on foreign travels that are sponsored by big pharmaceutical or food manufacturing companies.
Zarate may also want to check why some applications are immediately approved while others are consigned to the back burner.
“Hindi kikilos ang mga yan kung walang padulas (They won’t move if they’re not bribed),” said a small drug manufacturer, referring to FDA officials and employees.
* * * Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri wants to form a “select oversight committee” that will look into how government agencies spend their confidential or intelligence funds.
“It is our job as an independent and democratic Senate to keep watch over the use of the national budget. That is especially true for these sensitive funds, which are not subject to the usual auditing rules and procedures of the Commission on Audit,” Migz Zubiri said.
The proposed select oversight committee will be composed of three members of the majority, one from the minority and the Senate president.
It’s about time confidential or intelligence funds were subjected to audit.
Most government agencies that are assigned confidential or intel funds should be made to account for how those funds were spent.
Many officials – civil as well as military – enrich themselves by pocketing their intelligence funds.
Do you know why the communist New People’s Army and the Moro secessionist rebels are lording it over many parts of the country?
The answer is that the intelligence funds that should have been spent to pay off spies or “assets” are instead set aside by their custodians as nest eggs for their retirement.
* * * It’s ironic that the Senate approved a confidential fund for the Department of Education, and yet did not set aside a budget allocation for the education of “learners with disabilities.”
Before approving the intel or confidential fund for the DepEd, why didn’t the senators ask what it is for, since the department does not have law and order functions.
Here’s another irony: The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) does not have intelligence funds to fight cybercrime.
It seems intelligence funds are given as largesses to Cabinet members who have a strong pull with legislators.
* * * National Irrigation Administration (NIA) administrator Benny Antiporda filed graft charges with the Office of the Ombudsman against Lloyd Allain Cudal, acting manager of legal services, and Mary Annabelle CruzDomingo, another agency lawyer for “gross inexcusable negligence, misconduct and conduct unbecoming of public officers.”
The charges stemmed from a case that the NIA lost to a private company, Green Asia Construction Development Corp., which makes the irrigation agency liable to pay the former P205.96 million.
The Construction Industry Arbitration Commission or CIAC ruled in favor of Green Asia over the delay in the contract to rehabilitate an irrigation canal from Gapan, Nueva Ecija to San Ildefonso, Bulacan.
Green Asia was awarded the contract in 2016, but it was terminated in 2020. Both the NIA and Green Asia accused the other of causing the delay.
Antiporda, who was appointed NIA chief in August 2022, was livid after learning that the agency stood to lose P205.96 million to a private company.
He blames NIA lawyers Cudal and Cruz-Sto. Domingo for their “lackadaisical attitude and cavalier handling of the case.”
To get back at Antiporda for hounding them, Cudal and Cruz-Sto. Domingo filed cases of harassment against the NIA chief.
Now, why did the Office of the Ombudsman act on the complaint filed by Cudal and Sto. Domingo against Antiporda, but ignored the NIA chief’s charges filed against the two for losing the case against Green Asia?
The NIA Employees Association disowns Cudal and Sto. Domingo’s complaint and supports Antiporda.
* * * The unfolding drama at the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) never ceases to amaze the public.
After the discovery of 7,500 cans of beer inside the NBP and the excavation site for a supposed scuba diving pool at the director’s residence, a menagerie of horses, game fowl and pythons has been found within the prison walls! Jeez, what’s next? The public should not be surprised if a brothel is found within the NBP.