(MANILA BULLETIN) Senator Jinggoy Estrada said he will push for a P1-budget for the Optical Media Board (OMB) in next year’s proposed 2023 national budget.
According to Estrada, the OMB had no performance whatsoever during the past year.
“No collection, no apprehension of violators, none. Truly zero performance,” Estrada said in a recent interview.
“One year in office, they did nothing, zero performance. That’s why on Monday…I will propose a one peso budget for OMB,” the senator said.
During the last Senate hearing on the OMB’s proposed P75.858-million budget of the OMB, Estrada questioned the agency’s chairman Jeremy Marquez over the OMB’s lackluster performance since he took the helm of the regulatory office.
Estrada pointed out the OMB was averaging 200 administrative cases filed each month before Marquez took over.
Compared with Marquez’s, his predecessors were able to collect P560,00 in 2018; P1.83-million in 2019; P350,000 in 2020 and P2.3-million in 2021 in administrative penalties.
When Marquez took over, Estrada noted the OMB made zero seizures of counterfeit and illegal storage devices from November 2021, until August of 2022.
When asked to explain, Estrada was told by the OMB chairman that they saw no need to conduct seizure operations as the selling of pirated DVDs is no longer as rampant as before.
“Hindi pupuwedeng ganoon. Kasi kapag nagkasala ka, kapag labag sa batas, kailangan aksyunan mo. Hindi ka naman puwedeng maging friendly sa lahat. Kung maging friendly ka sa mga kawatan, kung maging friendly ka sa mga violators ng batas, walang mangyayari. Talagang wala kang maa-apprehend (It can’t be like that. Because when you sin, when you break the law, you have to act. You can’t be friendly to everyone. If you become friendly with thieves, if you become friendly with violators of the law, nothing will happen. You really can’t apprehend anyone),” Estrada said.