BAYAN Central Visayas has criticized Cebu lawmakers for securing P55.77 billion in infrastructure funding from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) while allegedly neglecting essential social services in the 2023-2025 national budget.
Group chairman Jaime Paglinawan urged legislators to focus on lawmaking rather than implementing projects, arguing that funds should instead support public hospitals, housing, and education.
Bayan or Bagong Alyansang Makabayan is a coalition of progressive groups founded in 1985 during the final years of the Marcos dictatorship.
Paglinawan noted that infrastructure initiatives are prone to corruption and that reallocating resources could significantly improve food security and healthcare access for the poor.
Bayan criticized Cebu lawmakers for allegedly securing billions from the DPWH’s P1.2-trillion infrastructure budget for 2023 to 2025, saying the funds should have been allocated to essential social services instead of infrastructure projects.
“If they instead crafted laws or resolutions during the budget hearing so that the P1.2 trillion would be allocated to public hospitals, many poor people could have received free medical care — their lives could have been saved, their laboratory fees waived, and they would no longer have to pay anything at the hospital,” Paglinawan said in Cebuano.
Documents analyzed by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reveal that in over three years (2023–2025), Cebu’s representatives received P55.77 billion in DPWH “allocable” funds.
These funds are part of a national system PCIJ labels as the present version of pork barrel.
Among Cebu districts, the biggest recipient was the 1st District under Rep. Rhea Mae Gullas, with over P8.33 billion.
The amounts for each district were calculated using the so-called “BBM Parametric Formula” and were predetermined before the General Appropriations Act (GAA) was finalized.
“Allocable funds” are defined as district-level DPWH budgets assigned before the national budget is enacted by Congress.
In a report from SunStar Cebu on Monday, Dec. 1, former Cebu 3rd District Rep. Pablo John “PJ” Garcia strongly rejected PCIJ’s “pork barrel” label, saying the Supreme Court defined pork barrel as a lawmaker intervening after the budget is passed or post-appropriation.
He said his district’s allocation in the GAA was exactly what the DPWH submitted in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), any project changes came from the agency, not from him.
In the same report, former Cebu 7th District Rep. Peter John Calderon also defended the allocations, saying the “allocables” were local projects already implemented, such as barangay and municipal road concreting, water systems, and multi-purpose buildings. / CDF