Press Release
May 27, 2009

PIMENTEL PUSHES BILL TO SCRAP SANGGUNIANG KABATAAN

Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today called on the Senate to start floor debate and approve the bill seeking to phase out of the Sangguniang Kabataan that he has drafted a long ago.

Pimentel said there is a strong public sentiment that the SK should be abolished because it has not lived up to the people's expectations as a training ground for future leaders and as an instrumentality for promoting the welfare of the youth.

He said the purpose for creating SK is being defeated because youth officials have not only neglected their mandated duties but have also succumbed to dishonest practices.

"The SK officials are being criticized, and maybe for good reasons, for acting like traditional politicians who use money, patronage and sometimes, intimidation, to get elected," said Pimentel, acknowledged Father of the Local Government Code (Republic Act 7160).

"Once in office, they begin to act exactly like the despised trapos using the funds of the office as a source of graft money, instead of utilizing the money to serve the best interest of the youth."

Citing one of the main reasons why the SK has become an ineffective but costly adjunct of local government, Pimentel observed that in most instances the elected chairman and other SK officials have to leave their barangays, stay in the poblacion (town proper) or transfer to faraway urban centers to pursue their college education.

In effect, they become absentee officials but somehow find a way to collect their regular allowances from the SK, which is highly irregular, Pimentel said.

The senator from Mindanao, however, pointed out that his proposal does not mean that the youth will be left unrepresented in the local government.

As embodied in Senate Bill 2155 that Pimentel has authored, a youth representative will sit in the local government council or sanggunian.

"The youth representatives in the municipal or city sanggunian will be the voice of the youth sector in the policy-making body of the local government," he said.

As embodied in the amendments to the Code under the Pimentel bill, the composition of the sangguniang barangay will be changed. It will be made up of the chairman as presiding officer and seven regular sanggunian members, including a youth representative. There will no longer be a separate Sangguniang Kabataan organization.

In addition to the other qualifications required of candidates for the sanggunian, the bill provides that no person shall be elected as youth representative in any sanggunian unless he is a Filipino citizen, a resident of the barangay for at least one year and not more than l8 years of age at the time of his filing of certificate of candidacy.

Pimentel said that when he spoke at the second national convention of the Liga ng Barangay at the convention center of the Mall of Asia in Pasay City a few days ago, he was surprised when the delegates gave the loudest applause to his proposal to dissolve the SK.

In his speech, he also discussed the Magna Carta for Barangays, which he has also authored, which among others upgrade benefits for barangay officials in the form of entitling them to regular salary.

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