MANILA, Philippines — Responding to an opposition lawmaker, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte yesterday said the grant of confidential funds in next year’s budget should be left to the entire Congress.
“The matter of the confidential funds should be left to the wisdom of the entire membership of the House of Representatives and the Senate and not to Ms. France Castro,” Duterte said in a statement, referring to the House deputy minority leader and ACT Teachers party-list representative.
Castro on Monday scored Duterte for requesting P500 million in confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President and another P150 million for the Department of Education (DepEd).
The lawmaker said the DepEd should be renamed “Department of Surveillance” after Duterte defended the inclusion of confidential expenses in the education budget.
“Is the DepEd now a police or military agency that it is conducting surveillance operations on students and teachers?” Castro said.
“It has not even scratched the surface in solving the learning crisis as well as providing adequate classrooms and a substantial salary increase for teachers as well as hire more teachers and now it is conducting surveillance?” she added.
In defending the budget, Duterte earlier said that education is intertwined with national security, with Undersecretary Michael Poa saying that the P150 million will be used to collect information on illegal recruitment in academic institutions.
“This statement of DepEd is also proof that indeed it is profiling, surveilling and harassing members and officers of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers,” said Castro, referring to previous statements of the Vice President that ACT says red-tagged the group.