'Instead of text tax, cut down Arroyo's budget'

Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino today said that instead of slapping an excise tax on text messaging and other wireless services, Congress should re-channel questionable portions of the President's budget to the education sector.

“If the rationale behind the imposition of a five centavos text tax is to fund education, why not augment the education budget by getting a slice of the President's pie?” said Palatino, who is also convenor of the consumer rights group TxtPower.

The young solon said the Office of the President's four billion pesos budget for 2010 can still be cut down by removing unnecessary items such as salaries for presidential advisers, overly expensive junkets and other pump-priming projects.

Palatino proposed a cutback on the number of presidential advisers and redundant executives in order to save millions of pesos. “By 2008, the number of presidential advisers and consultants reached an all-time high of 49. Just what exactly are these advisers and consultants doing aside from receive salaries? Other cabinet officials, such as department heads and assistant secretaries can perform their functions anyway,” he said.

Palatino questioned the existence, for instance, of presidential advisers for Trade & Development, Infrastructure, Job Generation, and another for Food Security & Job Creation. “What is the difference in function of a Presidential Adviser on Job Generation to the Department of Labor and Employment Secretary? Kung pareho lang ang kanilang trabaho, hindi ba't nagiging sobra-sobra ang nagagastos sa sweldo?”

Citing a study by the United Nations Development Programme, he said the government could save as much as P58 million a year if it would remove all the redundant executives from the bureaucracy.

Palatino also questioned the President's P150 million in intelligence funds, which only she can approve for release, and the whopping P1 billion for the Commission on Information and Communications Technology's telecommunication's office, which merely functions to send telegrams.

Burden to the youth

Palatino said he is against the text tax as it would burden the country's 56 million cellphone users, majority of which are students and young workers heavily dependent on texting and other mobile services.

Palatino said, “Despite statements from the authors of the bill and House Speaker Propspero Nograles that the 'text tax should not add to the burdens of the tax paying public, these do not guarantee that consumers will not shoulder this additional burden,” said Palatino.

“It is also an irony,” Palatino said, “that the government wants to tax text when it promotes, at the same time, the people's use of SMS to send their queries and grievances to the government through its m-governance program.”

Earlier, Kabataan Partylist and TxtPower launched a “texter's revolt” against text tax. Palatino also urged netizens to join their Facebook cause No Tax on Text and email pro text tax congressmen Danilo Suarez and House Speaker Prospero Nograles.