The proposed Department of Health budget for next year’s operations of government-run drug abuse treatment and rehabilitation centers will get a massive P2.31 billion cut under the 2018 national budget bill. The DOH has a proposed gross 2018 budget of P164.8 billion, 9 percent up

‘Every move you make, every law you break, every ops you fake, they’ll be watching you’ Body cams will bring down the body count and stop the bounty killings. The government has the money and the mandate to purchase vest- and car dashboard-mounted cameras for

Inmate population in 466 Bureau of Jail Management and Penology-run jails in the country soared to 142,282 by end of last June, doubling since 2013, or in just 42 months. This rapid rise, according to Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto, is putting a strain on state

Marawi has given Mindanao “knowledge and power” worth hundreds of billions of pesos that any amount government will spend to rehabilitate the war-ravaged city by the lake will only be a fraction of what it has given to Mindanao for more than half a century. Senate President

The proposed budget to bring electricity to public schools will jump nine-fold to almost P3 billion next year, a crucial step in bringing an estimated 7,413 schools “out of the dark ages,” Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto said today. One in six government elementary and

Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto today called for additional budget for the care and financial reward for the “more than one thousand soldiers wounded” in the battle to liberate Marawi City from terrorists. “If the injuries sustained by the wounded are so severe that they

The proposed DSWD budget for feeding malnourished kids will be cut by P1 billion, and Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto has warned officials to be ready with a good explanation “on why they will put this good program on a diet.” Recto said that under next year’s national

If the Philippine National Police (PNP) was able to ask for, and was given, funds to buy 48 bomb-sniffing dogs at a cost of P511,672 each, then it should also request funds for the acquisition of body cams for policemen, to be drawn from a P5.6 billion police modernization fund

Government agencies with a “build, build, build” mission have been told to hold a job fair in order to fill the vacancies in engineering and other construction-related positions which have been blamed for the slowdown of infrastructure projects. The proposal was made by Senate

Our soon-to-be man in Washington DC is no babe in the woods in US affairs. Though principally based in Manila, he has enough contacts in the American capital that he can be considered a Beltway insider. So wide is his network, I was told, that should Trump drain the swamp, those