• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The death of two Negros Oriental governors and the need to convince President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on the viability of the proposed Negros Island Region (NIR) were cited as the reasons for the delay in the passage of the bill in the Senate.
This was revealed yesterday by Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito, who chairs the Senate committee on local government, where the NIR bill is still pending for further deliberations.
The creation of NIR, which will be composed of Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental and Siquijor, has already been approved by the House of Representatives.
“As I mentioned before, there were unforeseen circumstances like the death of Negros Oriental Governor Roel Degamo and his successor (Carlo Jorge Joan Reyes), which delayed the process,” Ejercito said. “There is no truth to the insinuation that the NIR bill is stuck in my committee”.
Ejercito also said that he and Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri had already met with Governors Eugenio Jose Lacson of Negros Occidental and Manuel Sagarbarria of Negros Oriental in Manila two months ago, and discussed the NIR creation.
The senator added that they need to convince the President of the viability of the NIR since he is apprehensive of creating a new region as it will entail a lot of money.
“We don’t want to pass the measure only to be vetoed. That is why we are making sure all the bases are covered,” Ejercito said.
In lieu of giving new budgets to the regional offices of NIR, if approved, Lacson had been suggesting the utilization of existing budgets and personnel of various government offices in putting up regional offices, which was adopted in the previous NIR.
In 2016, NIR was created through an executive order issued by the late President Benigno S. Aquino III. However, it was later abolished by his successor Rodrigo Duterte.
Lacson said that during their meeting in Metro Manila, he and Sagarbarria agreed to adopt the previous set-up of regional offices to be assigned in the two provinces.
However, Negros Oriental recently requested for a swap of the location of offices.
They want the Department of Budget and Management and the Commission on Elections to be situated in their province instead while the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Department of Health to be based in Negros Occidental, which got the approval of Lacson. | GB
