Sa isang panayam nitong Lunes, sinabi ni Lacson na ang budget ng Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) para sa 2021 ay nasa P694 bilyon na resulta ng pagtapyas ng pondo mula sa ibang ahensya.
Nangyari umano ito sa mga pulong ng bicameral conference committee hinggil sa 2020 general appropriations bill na hindi binuksan sa publiko.
“I can only assume the reason behind the increase of P28B in the budget of the DPWH is that they cannot accommodate everybody. During the bicam, this is where the congressmen and senators haggle for their pet projects. And since they totaled an increase of P83.87B and they could only extract P55.21B from within the department, they had to get the P28B differential from other agencies,” paliwanag ng senador.
Sabi pa ni Lacson, inamin umano sa kanya ni Senador Sonny Angara, na nanguna sa Senate contingent bicam on the 2021 national budget, na tumaas ang budget ng DPWH upang maiwasan ang hindi pagkakasundo sa dalawang kapulungan ng Kongreso.
“When I interpellated him on the bicameral report he reported out on the floor, his explanation is that it is better to accommodate requests from congressmen than not having passed the budget at all because kung maabala baka magkaroon tayo ng reenacted budget,” sabi ni Lacson.
Nilinaw ni Lacson na hindi lang ang DPWH ang nakakuha ng benepisyo mula sa pagbawas sa pondo ng ibang government agency, sinabi rin niya na kwestiyonable ang paglikha ng bagong item sa appropriation nito.
“This is what I am questioning, because If it doesn’t involve planning by the implementing agency, then we will have a problem in the implementation because implementation is always a consequence of planning. And when an agency is not involved in the planning of a project, as a consequence of that, either it won’t be implemented at all, or the implementation will be very bad,” paliwanag pa ni Lacson.