The government has announced at least 90 percent or 1,546 of the 1,715 local government units in the country have declared the Communist Party of the Philippines as persona non grata or unwanted persons.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año said Friday this meant 64 provinces, 110 cities and 1,372 towns.
Año , in a statement, also said at least 12,474 of the 42,046 barangays in the country have closed their doors on the local communists, also rejecting the rebels as unwanted persons.
Año lauded the LGUs for their move, stressing “Much like the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to finally end this very old problem using a whole-of-nation approach, and the support from our LGUs gives us great assurance that we are not alone in this war.”
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has been allotted a P19-billion budget for 2021—the amount is over seven times higher than the P2.5 billion allotted for procurement of COVID-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Friday defended the retention of the P19 billion budget for the government’s anti-insurgency task force under the P4.5 trillion national budget for next year.
In a statement, Sotto said conflicted and geographically isolated barangays cleared of insurgents under the government’s anti-insurgency campaign must be rehabilitated and rebuilt into developed rural communities to sustain government efforts to cut them off from communist influence.
Under the NTF-ELCAC are 17 Regional Task Forces, 81 Provincial Task Forces, 1,405 City, and Municipal Task Forces, and 26,044 Barangay Task Forces.
The New People’s Army is the armed wing of the CPP while the National Democratic Front is the umbrella organization of all communist groups in the country.
Earlier, opposition lawmakers called for the realignment of the budget under the NTF-ELAC to augment funding for calamity funds COVID-19 vaccines.