MEMBERS of civil society on Tuesday condemned the President’s veto of the provision in the General Appropriation Act which suspended the payment of interest for questionable loans, including the substandard Austrian medical-waste incinerators installed in 26 public hospitals run by the Department of Health (DOH).

In a forum held at the Philippine Heart Center on Tuesday, the Health Care Without Harm, Freedom from Debt Coalition, the EcoWaste Coalition and members of the broad network called People Against Illegitimate Debt pointed out that in the national budget passed by Congress, the payments for interests of illegitimate debts were realigned to finance social services, thereby augmenting the budget of the DOH by P6.812 billion for a total health budget of P18.9 billion.

The P503.65-million Austrian medical waste project, involving the purchase of 26 units of substandard medical-waste incinerators, was among the highly questionable projects brought up during the forum.

Social Watch Philippines said the Philippine government should stop paying such illegitimate loans.

Through its Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI) campaign, Social Watch led 48 nongovernment organizations in calling on lawmakers to strike out some P1.3 billion earmarked for anomalous projects from the proposed 2008 budget.

This includes the controversial medical-waste incinerators loan package, which resulted, not only in a $2- million-per-year debt burden, but also endangered the health of Filipinos. The waste incinerators emitted toxic dioxin, which was 870 times the limit set by the Clean Air Act.

The loan was incurred in 1997, when the Philippine and Austrian governments signed a P503.65-million loan for the purchase of the incinerators for 26 hospitals under the DOH.

In 2003 there was an order to stop using the incinerators to comply with the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999.

Yet, the Philippine government continued to pay $2 million, or P100 million a year, to the Austrian government for the incinerators and will continue to do so until 2014.

For 2008 the government will pay P17.7 million for interest and P79.33 million for principal amortization of the incinerators.

With the President’s veto of the suspension of debt-interest payments, the civil-society groups, however, were concerned that the augmented expenditures for health approved by Congress may not materialize.

According to director Maylene Beltran of the Health Policy Development and Planning Bureau, the DOH originally requested only P14.9 billion, but Congress passed a 66-percent increase in the DOH’s budget for this year.

Among others, the budget for the reduction of malaria, leprosy, TB and HIV-AIDS was increased by 327 percent, the budget for environmental health by 2, 918 percent and the budget for the upgrade of health services by 27 percent.

The extra funds the DOH got in the national budget were sourced from the suspension of debt-interest payments for questionable loans. Beltran said the partnership between the DOH and civil-society groups in working on health issues has greatly helped to push for an augmented budget for health services in 2008.

“There is a great need for us to concentrate our efforts in reaching the targets set by the Millenium Development Goals. Our maternal mortality rate, for instance, is still very high at 162 deaths per 100,000 live births,” Beltran said.

She also noted that, historically, only about 75 percent of the approved budget for the DOH is ultimately released by the Department of Budget and Management.

The President’s veto, according to the groups, honors illegitimate debts that were not only useless but had actually financed projects that were harmful to the people.

Ronnel Lim, program officer of Health Care Without Harm, said “For the harmful and useless incinerators, we now have to pay roughly $2 million in principal amortization and interest payments until 2014.”

Emmanuel Hizon of the Freedom from Debt Coalition said the debt-service suspension made by Congress should be a reminder to everyone that the illegitimate-debt problem goes beyond the recent headlines generated by the scrapped ZTE- national broadband network project.

“We all need to take a much closer look into all these anomalous loans incurred in the past in name of the Filipino people,” said Hizon.

Senate to SC: Reverse ruling on executive privilege

THE Senate on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court (SC) to reverse its March 25 ruling upholding the legality of President Arroyo’s invocation of executive privilege to prevent former National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) chairman Romulo Neri from divulging details of their conversation with regard to the aborted $329-million national broadband network project of the government with China’s ZTE Co.

MEMBERS of civil society on Tuesday condemned the President’s veto of the provision in the General Appropriation Act which suspended the payment of interest for questionable loans, including the substandard Austrian medical-waste incinerators installed in 26 public hospitals run by the Department of Health (DOH).

SIX Filipino seafarers were among the 30 crewmen who were taken hostage on board a French-registered cruise ship Le Ponant on Friday in the gulf between Somalia and Yemen, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Tuesday.

ZAMBOANGA CITY—The foreign donor community has reaffirmed support for Mindanao’s peace and development, citing the need to move the peace process and harmonize convergence of foreign aid in the region.

THE Philippine National Police (PNP) is now coordinating with the Indonesian government for the possible taking of tissue samples from the relatives of Indonesian terrorist Dulmatin to help in identifying the latter through DNA tests.

SPEAKER Prospero Nograles on Tuesday said Malacañang should give assurance it can guarantee that its request that the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and Scarborough Shoal should be treated as a “regime of islands” and not a part of the country’s archipelagic baseline will not endanger the country’s legal claim on the disputed areas in the South China Sea.

THE Senate is poised to open a separate inquiry into the multibillion-peso swine scam involving public funds released as loans by the Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corp. (Quedancor) to still-unidentified beneficiaries.

A government team led by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita will leave for Geneva on Wednesday to report administration efforts to improve the Philippines’ human-rights record before the United Nations, Malacañang said on Tuesday.

A Japanese businessman faces the prospect of having his business visa canceled after he assaulted the daughter of a prominent Cebu politician at the Centennial 2 passenger terminal on Wednesday morning.