Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has filed House Bill 6236 seeking to abolish the Road Board and transfer its functions to the Department of Public Works and Highways and to the Department of Transportation, as a means to prevent misuse of billions of pesos of the Road User’s Tax collected by the government.
The Road Board was created under Republic Act No. 8794, which imposed a motor vehicle users’ charge on owners of all types of motor vehicles.
The board is tasked to ensure prudent and efficient management and use of the special funds known as the Road User’s Tax (or Road Fund), which is earmarked solely and exclusively for road maintenance and improvement of road drainage, installation of efficient traffic lights and road safety devices, and air pollution control.
But Alvarez said over the years, the Commission on Audit has unearthed signs of illegal utilization of the Road Fund, estimated to have amounted to a total of P90.72 billion from 2001 to December 2012.
“Obviously, the Road Board is just another layer of bureaucracy, which became another avenue for graft and corruption,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez said that according to CoA reports, some P515.50 million of the Road Fund was used in 2004 to 2008 for payment of salaries, allowances, maintenance and other operating expenses, which were properly chargeable to the regular budget.
Citing a CoA report, Alvarez said in 2011, P62.52 million of the Road Fund was used for the Road Board’s engineering and administrative overhead expenses. Likewise, in 2013, CoA uncovered findings of irregularities in the use of more than P1.66 billion of the funds, he added.
Alvarez added that the CoA has pointed out that from 2001 to 2010 there were discrepancies amounting to P1.495 billion in the total collection of Road User’s Tax between the collections declared by the Land Transportation Office and the certification from the Bureau of Treasury.
Under the bill, all collections of the Road Fund shall be “remitted to the National Treasury and shall be appropriated to the proper government departments such as the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of Transportation, which will implement the road safety measures and projects.”
On the other hand, the bill retained the original provision of the law which requires that funds collected under RA 8794 pertaining to the Trust Fund for Pollution Control, shall be appropriated to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
