INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS DEMAND PGMA TO RELEASE IMPOUNDED HEALTH BUDGET

December 1, 2009

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS DEMAND PGMA TO RELEASE IMPOUNDED HEALTH BUDGET

International organizations and individuals from ten countries joined local health budget advocates in calling for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (PGMA) to release the 2008 impounded health budget.

In a petition addressed to PGMA, 1,200 individuals and organizations from Argentina, India, Kenya, other Latin American countries, Mexico, Nepal, South Africa, Uganda, and United States (1) demanded the release of appropriations made in the 2008 national budget for the Department of Health (DOH). This includes P100 million for the purchase of autoclave machines for infectious medical waste treatment, P400 million for tuberculosis program and P1.82 billion for family health.

“These are meritorious allocations approved by Congress and will surely redound to the benefit of the people,” said the petitioners. “When the current dark cloud that hangs on every country’s economy is gone, there is no surer way to seize the opportunities of an economic upswing than by ensuring now that the Philippines is contributing to strong and healthy nations.”

“Amidst warnings of a reenacted 2010 budget, we are hopeful that the impounded 2008 budget will still be released,” said Merci Ferrer, Executive Director of Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia (HCWH-SEA), an active member of the Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI)-health cluster.

“The support of international organizations shows that we are fighting for important budget allocations. Public health must always be of outmost concern to our government,” said Ferrer. “We have seen the public health damage brought by the typhoons that visited the country. We do not want to be caught unprepared when climate change brings in more public health chaos,” she added.

In the Philippines, petitioners include Social Watch-Philippines (SWP), ABI, and HCWH-SEA and several non-government organizations and health care facilities (2) from different parts of the country.

“While everyone is busy thinking 2010 election, we urge PGMA to look at the budget and give the health sector what is due.”

Meanwhile, former national treasurer Leonor Magtolis Briones, lead convenor of SWP which organized the ABI, said that PGMA has been impounding funds since 2008 when she introduced the notion of a conditional veto.

“SWP and ABI members were appalled when PGMA, in her veto message on the budget in 2008, said that any realignment proposed by legislature will have to be approved by her for release. This debilitated the power of the purse of the Senate and House of Representatives. Increases in the allocations for critical socioeconomic services such as health, education, agriculture and environment which were included in the GAA through the initiative of the legislature are not being released,” Briones said. “The problem is both Houses agreed to this conditional veto of the President,” she added.

“PGMA combined this with orders which allowed her to impound certain budget items and move them to her discretion. This is a combination of savings, impoundment and conditional veto. Since 2008, the President always intervenes with the release of the funds and has been transferring funds to various departments and bodies which are not part of the executive,” said Briones who is also an ambassador of the W8, a group of eight women representing civil society coalitions in eight countries engaging international leaders for better quality of health and education services.

She noted that the Overall Savings of P140 billion, as recorded in the 2010 National Expenditure Program (NEP), represent impoundment of unreleased appropriations.

“Officials of various implementing agencies already attested that the overall savings being reported by the Department of Budget Management (DBM) are actually unreleased appropriations. Also, the departments were not given the opportunity to generate savings from these appropriations,” she said.

“The record on Overall savings in the NEP 2010 contains transfers to and from bodies such as the Commission on Audit (COA), Commission on Elections (COMELEC), Commission on Human Rights (CHR), Congress, the Judiciary, and Office of the Ombudsman, which should have been off limits to the President’s prerogative,” Briones added.

ABI has been calling on legislators to immediately issue provisions against the impoundment of funds by the executive. The group also called on the DBM to provide proper documentation of fund transfers from one government agency to another. The Commission on Audit (COA) already complained that the “DBM could not provide the appropriate documentation where the savings came from or the agency whose funds/savings where transferred to another agency.”

Organized by Social Watch Philippines, ABI is a consortium of 60 non-government organizations that has been actively engaging the government in the budget process for the past six years. It is calling for increased allocation in the budget, specifically for education, health, agriculture and environment sectors.

HCWH is an international coalition of more than 470 organizations in 52 countries, working to transform the health care sector worldwide, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. For more information on HCWH-Southeast Asia, see www.noharm.org.ph.

Sonia G. Astudillo, +63 918 9182369, sonia@hcwh.org / Merci Ferrer, + 63 920 9056113, merci@hcwh.org

1 Signatories include public health specialist and Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)-Kenya Dr. Paul Saoke and PSR-San Francisco Bay Area President Dr Robert M. Gould, Institute for Zero Waste in Africa- South Africa National Coordinator Muna Lakhani, Desmond D’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance in South Africa, Rico Euripidou of groundwork-Friends of the Earth-Africa, Uganda Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control Sec-Gen Ellady Muyambi and Pro-biodiversity Conservationist in Uganda Coordinator Robert Tumwesigye Baganda, Director of Centro de Analisis y Accion en Toxicos y sus Alternativas (CAATA) in Mexico Fernando G. Bejarano, Cecilia Allen of Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives-Latin America, Institute for Sustainable Future-US Executive Director Jamie Harvie and Green Guide for Health Care’s Janet Brown, Center for Public Health and Environmental Development-Nepal Executive Director Ram Charita Sah, Aquene Freechild of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, and HCWH Boston Regional Director Bill Ravensi, HCWH Co Executive Director Anna Gillmore-Hall and HCWH International Team Coordinator Josh Karliner.

2 Philippine signatories include: Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)-Philippines, Action for Economic Reform, La Liga Policy Institute, Kilusan Kontra Kurapsyon-PUP, Initiatives for International Dialogue, Columban Missionaries – Justice. Peace & Integrity of Creation Ministry (JPIC), Philippine Human Rights Information Center, UE Kapit Bisig Alumna Association, Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK), Freedom from Debt Coalition-Iloilo Chapter, Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, Panay Rural Dev't Center, Inc., WomanHealth Philippines, Piglas Kababaihan/Woman Health Phils, Ang Nars, Philippine Nurses Association, Department of Health-Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao, DoH-CHD-Zamboanga Peninsula, RHU-Monreal Masbate, DoH-CHD Bicol, Legaspi City, DoH-CHD Eastern Visayas, CHD-5, Sorsogon Provincial Health Office, CHD-2, Tuguegarao, DoH-10 Cagayan de Oro, (PRDCI), Philippine Network on Climate Change, Cycling Advocates (CyCad), Earthsavers Movement, NGOs for Integrated Protected Areas, Partido Kalikasan Institute (PKI), Sagip Sierra Madre Environmental Society, Inc. (SSMESI), Provincial Government Environment and Natural Resources Office-Northern Samar.