Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said that he shared the view of the Tingog Sinirangan Party-list, whose first nominee is Leyte First District Representative Yedda Marie Romualdez, that Leyte should get at least four percent of the national budget.
Enrile said this percentage from the national budget is commensurate with its population of four million, or four percent of the national population.
The Tingog Sinirangan party-list had lamented that while Leyte and Samar comprise four percent of the country’s population, it has been receiving a little more than one percent share of the national budget for the past 10 years.
Romualdez said this funding that could have made more schools and hospitals, or build the needed infrastructure, or start up sustainable livelihoods to spur development in the Eastern Visayas Region.
The partylist nominess said their people deserve fair share so that they will have an equal opportunity to get out of poverty into a better and brighter future.
Enrile said that because of its current situation, Eastern Visayas remains one of the poorest in the country aside from the fact that it has been devastated by supertyphoon Yolanda.
“The people of Leyte and Samar deserve a better deal from the government, especially since this region remains still one of the poorest in the country,” said Enrile as he courted votes from Palo residents in Leyte.
“Let us hasten even more the recovery and development of the people who were most affected by Typhoon Yolanda,” he added.
Enrile also supports the objectives of the Tingig Sinirangan party-list to prioritize through a legislative agenda the expansion of the Leyte Ecological-Industrial Zone as well as the institutionalization of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) to aid the province’s poor.
“I speak for neither Hugpong ng Pagbabago nor Otso Diretso. I speak for the people, and I will be your voice in the Senate,” Enrile told residents at the Yolanda resettlement area where he was warmly welcomed.
The former Senate leader also said he would introduce legislation that will improve the government’s capacity and capabilities to prepare for and respond to super typhoons.
“The destruction we experienced during Typhoon Yolanda is something that cannot happen again, here or anywhere in the Philippines,” the veteran lawmaker said as he commended the Warays of Eastern Visayas for their resiliency in rebuilding their lives amid the effects of Typhoon Yolanda that devastated the area almost six years ago.
Enrile, who stayed in Leyte and Samar for a two-day visit, said the exemplary attitude of the Waray people should be reciprocated with better government services – schools, hospitals, and infrastructure – that could speed up the development in the island provinces.