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Senate President Manuel Villar said Monday that the
Senate would maintain its independence in the Second Regular Session
“in upholding the best interests of the Filipino citizenry.”
“The Senate will remain
committed to carrying out its check-and-balance function under the
Constitution aside from passing urgently needed laws,” he said.
He pointed out that in the First
Regular Session, the Senate passed 36 bills on the third and final
reading while conducting investigations in aid of legislation.
The Senate Committee on Ways and
Means will inquire Tuesday into the reported smuggling of cars at
the Cagayan Export Processing Zone in Port Irene, Sta. Ana, Cagayan.
On Thursday, the Senate blue-ribbon committee headed by Sen. Alan
Peter Cayetano will start its investigation into the alleged anomaly
of the billion-peso swine dispersal program of the Quedan Corp. of
the Philippines.
Villar said that the updating of
the 14-year-old Salary Standardization Law is one of the measures
that he would be personally pushing in the Second Regular Session.
“The amendment of the law,
enacted in 1989 and last updated in 1994, is long overdue and should
reflect inflation in the present year,” he said.
The salary law covers the entire
bureaucracy. The Senate Committee on Education has already approved
a bill increasing the monthly salary of public school teachers by
P9,000.
“I urge our colleagues in the
Senate and the House to make it their priority to enact as soon as
possible a salary scheme for our 1.4-million government employees
that is reflective of present realities,” Villar said.
The other priority bills
identified by Villar are the renewable energy, amendment of the
Electric Power Industry Reform Act, the delineation of the
country’s baselines, global warming, the Japan-Philippine economic
Partnership Agreement and measures to achieve food sufficiency.
He has also proposed to double
the assistance to victims of Typhoon Frank and to crease a special
fund for the repatriation of overseas Filipino workers in distress.
In a related development, Sen.
Loren Legarda welcomed on Monday the support of the Department of
Education for her bill seeking to punish parents who don’t send
their children to school.
Senate Bill 924, filed by Legarda,
imposes jail term of up to six months and a fine of up to P100,000
for parents or guardians who deprive their children or wards of
compulsory elementary education. The measures seeks to reinforce the
penal provisions on delinquent parents who abandon their children or
force them to engage in activities that tend to corrupt or degrade
them.
Rep. Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan
de Oro City introduced the counterpart House bill.
--Efren L. Danao
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