Pimentel: Let's abolish the Road Board

Presumptive Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III today sought the abolition of the Road Board to remove another layer of bureaucracy which became an avenue for graft and corruption.

He said by abolishing the Road Board, billions of pesos in road fund would be re-channelled to the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of Transportation and Communications.

Pimentel, president of the administration party PDP Laban, said the DPWH and the DOTC are the proper government agencies to implement the road safety measures and projects, using the road fund.

He recently filed Senate Bill 114, seeking to amend Republic Act 8794 that created the Road Board as an attached agency of the DPWH to implement the prudent and efficient management and utilization of the road fund.

But Pimentel said the Road Board failed to carry its mandates as it was embroiled in controversies based on Commission on Audit (COA) reports, showing illegal utilization of billions of pesos in collections.

Citing COA reports, the road fund, he said, was estimated at P90.72 billion from 2001 to December 2012.

But COA discovered usage of the road fund other than the mandated road maintenance and improvement of road drainage, installation of adequate and efficient traffic lights and road safety devices and air pollution control.

Instead, the Road Board, he said, used P515.50 million of the road fund for payment of salaries, allowances, and its maintenance and other operating expenses in 2004 to 2008.

Again, in 2001, a total of P62.52 million of the road fund was used for the engineering and administrative overhead expenses of the Road Board, he said based on COA report.

In 2013, findings of irregularities in the expenditure of more than P1.66 billion in road fund were uncovered by the COA, added Pimentel.

Moreover, COA said that from 2001 to 2010, there were discrepancies amounting to P1.496 billion upon review of LTO collections at P71,887,575,394 against Bureau of Treasury deposit of P70,392,954,323.