NPO gets only P6-K budget for 2015 Written by Charlie V. Manalo Saturday, 20 September 2014 00:00 Not six billion, not six million, but only P6,000. Kabataan Rep. Terry Ridon yesterday expressed surprise the national budget has allocated only a total of P6,000 for the National Printing Office (NPO) for its operations for the whole of 2015. In the plenary discussion of the budget of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), to which NPO is an attached agency, Ridon heavily criticized the “appallingly minuscule” budget allocation for the national government’s official printing arm. Section 2 of the special provisions for NPO in House Bill 4968 or the 2015 General Appropriations Bill (GAB) states, “The amount of P6,000 appropriated herein for Personnel Services shall be exclusively for the payment of regular pay, allowances and benefits of personnel of (NPO).” “Only P6,000 to pay for the salaries of its 441 employees? Where will P6,000 get you nowadays? That’s even lower than the monthly salary of a minimum wage worker!” Ridon exclaimed. According to the 2015 GAB, starting next year, the NPO needs to source its funds almost wholly from its internal income from its production and printing activities. “I believe this is highly irregular. This is utter state abandonment of a government agency. We have to remember that the NPO is not a GOCC. It is entitled to government funding, just like any other regular government agency,” Ridon said. In a dialog with NPO employees, Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Herminio Coloma dubbed the 2015 NPO budget as an “experimental budget.” “Is it really an experimental budget or a closure notice? Allotting P6,000 for a whole agency is tantamount to killing it,” he noted. Based on data from the PCOO, the NPO actually requested P169.2 million for its operations next year, of which P150.3 million is for payment of salaries. In 2014, Congress appropriated P78.4 million for the NPO. “Instead of allotting a measly P6,000 for NPO, Congress should approve its original request of P150.3 million. We have to remember that we are talking about the agency that prints government documents. We can’t allow it to simply stop operating because of this paralyzing budget,” Ridon said. The legislator also raised the issue that the national government is purposely cutting subsidy for NPO to force it to stop operations and let private printing companies take over the “lucrative business of printing government books, forms, and documents.” “NPO’s slow death began when former President Gloria Arroyo signed Executive Order 378 in 2004, which removed NPO’s exclusive jurisdiction over printing service requirements of the government,” Ridon noted. EO 378 states that NPO “shall have to compete with the private sector, except in the printing of election paraphernalia.” “There have been reports that certain unscrupulous government officials are getting kickbacks from rigging printing contracts for government documents. That’s apparently the motive behind the very low allocation for NPO,” Ridon explained. tribune.net.ph/metro/npo-gets-only-p6-k-budget-for-2015
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 23:30:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015