SWS: Most Pinoys think they did not benefit from pork barrel

MANILA, Philippines - Majority of Filipinos believe that their communities did not benefit from projects funded by lawmakers' Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF), a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed.

According to the survey results, 67 percent of the polled Filipinos claimed that their areas did not benefit from pork barrel projects while 32 percent answered otherwise.

Sixty percent of the respondents also believed that "a lot" of PDAF were wasted due to corruption in any project implementation while 24 percent said "somewhat a lot" of the lawmakers' funds were misused.

Also, 10 percent said “a little” was lost to corruption and 5 percent said no funds were misused.

But 54 percent of the respondents believed their representatives in Congress did not gain financially from projects funded by the PDAF, while 42 percent said otherwise.

Geographically, majority of the respondents in Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao think their areas did not benefit from PDAF projects and "a lot" of the funds were wasted due to corruption.

charts from sws.org.ph

The SWS survey was conducted from September 20 to 23 and polled 1,200 adults nationwide. Its results were revealed a day after a Pulse Asia poll also showed Filipinos' perception on the pork barrel.

The results of the Pulse Asia survey, which was conducted from September 14 to 27, showed that a little over half of the respondents (54 percent) does not know of any project or program in their place of any member of Congress in the last six years.

The survey results also revealed that the lack of awareness is reported by majorities in almost all geographic areas (54 percent to 64 percent) and socio-economic classes (52 percent to 55 percent).

According to the same survey, 77 percent of the polled Filipinos believe that at least half of the funds allocated for a lawmaker's project is lost to corruption.

Read: Congress budget wasted on corruption – poll

The Pulse Asia survey also showed that 42 percent of Filipinos think that having projects and programs should be the priority of legislators.

Only 32 percent of the respondents believe that lawmaking should be the senators and congressmen's priority, followed by investigating scandals (14 percent) and review and passage of the annual national budget (12 percent).