MANILA – Opposition lawmaker Neri Colmenares has challenged President Benigno Simeon Aquino to classify as urgent House Bill 2993 to make the Malampaya funds more transparent and open to Congressional scrutiny by transferring it to the General funds.
“In the light of the rampant misuse of the Malampaya funds from the Arroyo administration up to the present, it is high time that this presidential pork be open to scrutiny so that it can serve its primary purpose and not as a personal campaign kitty of the president and a fund source for political patronage,” Colmenares said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
He accused Aquino is misleading the public by saying that his spending of Malampaya funds is for energy resource development as required by law. He said there is no way Aquino can justify buying a ship for P430 million and another P450 million for his so-called Tawid Pasada program doling out P1,000 to drivers selected by the Department of the Interior and Local Government.
Worse, he said, spending P800 million to drydock a P450 million ship is certainly irregular and must be investigated by Commission on Audit. “If the Malampaya fund was spent on energy resource exploitation we would have eliminated brown outs by now and lessened our electric bills. This abuse must be stopped,” Colmenares said.
House Bill 2993 is aimed at amending Presidential Decree 910 which created the Energy Development Board.
Malampaya funds are revenues and taxes generated from gas fields off Palawan province. It is also called Malampaya Deepwater Gas-to-Power project, the first undertaking of its kind in the Philippines employing state-of-the-art deepwater technology to draw natural gas from deep beneath Philippine waters.
It is a joint undertaking of the Philippine government and the private sector and the project is spearheaded by the Department of Energy and developed and operated by Shell Philippines Exploration B.V. on behalf of joint venture partners Chevron Malampaya LLC and the PNOC Exploration Corporation.
20