By ABS-CBN News, May 18, 2022
MANILA – Nearly all or 99 percent of local governments have submitted their devolution plans as the Mandanas ruling takes effect this year, an official from the Department of the Interior and Local Government said Wednesday.
The 2018 Supreme Court ruling titles local governments to a share of all national taxes.
Local governments this year received 30 percent to 35 percent more national tax allotment, according to DILG Undersecretary Epimaco Densing.
“As early as last year, we’ve already started directing all our local governments to make a writeup of their devolution transition plan. As of the latest report we’ve received, 99 percent of our local government units down to barangays have already submitted their devolution plan,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of reviewing, sitting down and implementing it.”
Government is eyeing a 3-year period to “ensure at the end of the day full devolution will be implemented and complied with by 2024 or 2025,” Densing added.
CCTV SYSTEM
Meantime, it is up to the next administration whether to implement a metro-wide CCTV system in Metro Manila and Davao City proposed in 2018, according to Densing.
The CCTVs would be high-definition and have facial recognition, Densing said.
“It’s supposed to put in at least 10,000 to 12,000 CCTVs all over the NCR and some as a complement in Davao City,” he said.
“We’ll just let them decide whether to pursue this because of funding concerns…They’ll most probably look at it when our economy starts to recover in the next 2 years.”
Densing earlier said the next administration should continue President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war as the supposedly lower crime rate brought investors to the country. He did not cite any data.
