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Scientists should not be muzzled during the pandemic as their views guide government in decision making, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said. “We can’t contain the pandemic if we censor studies,” Recto said, referring to calls to stop the independent OCTA Research from...

Malacañang should convene a task force, to include diplomats and Taipans, that will solve the shortage of Tocilizumab and other anti-pneumonia drugs made scarce by the surge in the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said it is ti...

The Department of Health (DOH) is planning to buy 758,700 sets of personal protective equipment (PPE) next year at an average cost of P1,079 each, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said. The P819 million needed for the purchase has been included in the 2022 national...

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto welcomed the administration’s request for standby authority to buy as much as P45.4 billion worth of vaccine booster shots, should the same be needed next year. Recto said the amount is part of the P151.6 billion in unprogrammed funds in...

Four in 10 personnel positions – or 5,826 – in the Commission on Audit (COA) are vacant, a manpower lack that will be aggravated when 1,000 personnel who are in the 61-65 age group retire. “That’s the equivalent of 10 Army battalions,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph...

The institutionalization of “pasa-buy” in government purchases has transformed two agencies into “mega parking lots of funds” which, despite years-long delays in delivering the goods and projects they were contracted to buy, still raked in hundreds of millions in commissions....

Big cities like Manila have the “boots on the ground and the muscle memory” to conduct large scale distribution of aid, whether in cash or in kind, “complex operations which understaffed national agencies may find hard to do on their own,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto...

The order suspends the collection of the tax. The permanent solution, however, will be in the form of a law purging all ambivalence in that provision of the Tax Code. Still, it is a welcome move and I thank the good Secretary of Finance for this order, which would help ease the...