‘RH must go hand-in-hand with budget bill’ By Charlie V. Manalo 08/20/2011

‘RH must go hand-in-hand with budget bill’

By Charlie V. Manalo 08/20/2011

Saying that no amount of increase in the budgetary appropriations could suffice if the inordinate population growth is not checked, a senior member of the House of Representatives yesterday called on his colleagues to accord the Reproductive Health Bill (RHB) the same priority as that of the the General Appropriations Bill (GAB).

House Minority Leader and Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, the principal author of the RHB, made this call as he underscored that “no amount of trillion-peso of appropriations will be adequate if the increase in the national budget is eroded by an inordinate population growth because parents, couples and women are not fully afforded the right to responsibly and freely determine the number and spacing of their children.”

The priority enactment of the RHB was recently given presidential imprimatur and has been included as one of the additional priority bills of the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac).

Lagman, who was the chairman of the committee on appropriations during the First Session of the 14th Congress, said that the complementarities of the RHB and the GAB are clear in the following major instances:.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/nation/20110820nat3.html