|
SEN.
Edgardo Angara Monday backed moves to provide for a
supplemental budget to the Department of Agriculture
(DA) for 2008, insisting on the need to spend more on
the country’s agriculture sector in order to cushion the
impact of rising food and fuel prices.
In a
statement, Angara asserted the additional funding should
be allocated to increase productivity and modernize
agriculture in different parts of the country.
“The
global food crisis we now experience, sharply felt in
the Philippines through steep rice prices, is a tragic
reminder to all of us—government, especially—that food
and agriculture are fundamental for any developing
country,” he said.
“We’ve
got to step up modernizing agriculture in the country,
not only to secure food for our people, but to provide
the most effective weapon against hunger and poverty.”
Angara, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food,
argued that “food self-sufficiency cannot be achieved
given the low level of investment in our agriculture
sector.”
“We’ve
got to make our agriculture sector more productive to
meet the increasing demands of our people, especially
since we have to feed 100 million Filipinos by 2010,” he
added.
At the
same time, Angara warned that “a weak and corrupt
judicial system” could negate the positive effects of
the government’s developmental efforts.
He noted
that the Judiciary, likewise, needs an additional
allocation of at least P3 billion to augment the regular
budget of the Supreme Court. “We need to equip our
Judiciary with the best and the brightest judges and
lawyers, and empower them to make sure under-the-table
misdeeds would not be left unaccounted for.”
Angara noted the shortage of judges and government lawyers, citing
2001 data—34 percent of the 2,100 trial-court judgeships
in the country remain vacant, with the worse case in
Western Mindanao, where only 17 of the 54 judgeships and
18 of the 56 Shari’ah courts had judges.
He
earlier filed a bill seeking to increase the salary
grade level of judges and lawyers in the Judiciary.
|
