Searching for Pablo

Higher cause

April 18, 2007

 

If you're a government worker and you think about retiring anytime this year, you might lay down on that plan for a while.

It seems that bright boys in Congress dipped into the retirement payment of state workers worth P3.6 billion and realigned it for something more consequential — to nearly double their pork barrel allocation from P6.24 billion in the 2006 budget to P11.445 billion this year.

Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya was quoted by the Inquirer as saying that his office submitted P6.2 billion but it was increased by the bicameral committee (composed of both the Senate and the House of Representative).

“From an initial glance at the budget, the P3.6 billion came from the retirement pay of government workers,” he said.

Simply put, if the Department of Budget could not find another source to reimburse the retirement pay, about 8,000 government workers who are due to retire this year won't get anything.

I guess the retiring government employees would have to sacrifice this bit of inconvenience for the country. State workers already spent their whole lives in the service of the public, why not extend their service after retirement? Don't be such selfish ingrates as to deny your retirement pay from our distinguished representatives. I mean, where's our sense of patriotism?

After all, our legislators are only doing this for the benefit of their constituents. Forget that the timing is suspect since it's election season; forget reports that as much as 30 percent in commission from the projects approved by the legislators goes to their pockets; forget that project allocation by Congress is already redundant to the duty of local government units to identify and implement projects within their boundaries.

That's just talk man. And talk, just like pirated DVDs from china, is cheap.

Posted by searchingforpablo at 12:07 pm | permalink

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