(MANILA BULLETIN) A Senate finance subcommittee has approved the P976 million budget of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and its attached agencies.
“The deliberation of the proposed budget of the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Violations Victims Memorial Commission is hereby submitted to the plenary since no other senators are willing to question,” Sen. Jinggoy Estrada said.
Just a few minutes after opening the deliberations, Estrada submitted the budget to the plenary.
In the hearing last Sept. 6, the agency said that for the Fiscal Year 2024, its proposed budget is P1.9 billion but for the National Expenditure Program (NEP) of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), they were only granted P900 million, slashing almost half of their proposed budget.
Sen. Raffy Tulfo even floated the idea of increasing the confidential funds of CHR, stating that P1 million is not enough for the agency.
CHR Executive Director Jacqueline Ann de Guia stated that in 2018 and 2019, they were given P5 million worth of confidential funds which they fully utilized and by 2020 they got P1 million up to the present.
Meanwhile, the subcommittee rescheduled the expenditure program of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) to Sept. 27.