TRC mere conduit of PDAF releases

We, the officers and staff of the Technology Resource Center (TRC), formerly known as the Technology and Livelihood Resource Center, welcome the series of investigative reports published in the Inquirer very recently to shed light on the alleged misuse or misallocation by certain lawmakers of their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

The TRC indeed was one of the government agencies allowed as formal channels for the release of the PDAF from 2006 up to 2009. The nature of the function we were allowed to perform, however, was purely that of a mere conduit—such that we had no hand in selecting or approving the NGOs endorsed by the lawmakers, and neither did we have any say nor supervisory influence on how their specific projects were implemented.

However, ever since the assumption to office of the current TRC director general, Dennis L. Cunanan, in 2010, the TRC has stopped facilitating such transactions. Even as early as then, the TRC started investigating the matter in hopes of instituting its own internal reforms. Upon recommendation of the resident auditor of the Commission on Audit, the TRC promptly blacklisted all NGOs found questionable or with “adverse findings” in their past transactions with us, in connection with PDAF releases—thus effectively halting the TRC’s involvement in the PDAF.

In anticipation, the TRC management, in cooperation with the COA, proceeded to institute a stringent set of new safety nets to avoid repeating old mistakes.

When the TRC was excluded, under the 2009 General Appropriations Act, from the menu of government agencies allowed to act as conduit for pork barrel releases, we took it as welcome news for it enabled us to fully focus on our core mandate of information dissemination and technology commercialization for livelihood and entrepreneurial development.

We are thereby standing by the TRC management in assuring the Inquirer and the public that we shall be as transparent as we can be to help facilitate the positive resolution of this PDAF issue.

—NELIA A. DUMLAO, president, ROGELIO G. ARCONCIL,

vice president, MARIA THERESITA E. PATULA, secretary,

ZENAIDA V. BRUAN, treasurer, GREGORIO D. FRIVALDO, VENERANDO C. DULAY, BELINA A. CONCEPCION, RAUL M. DURANTE, JUN R. CASTRO, RENATO E. IMPERIAL, FLORIANNE B. QUIJADA, members,

Board of Directors of the Technology and Livelihood Resource Center-Employees’ Association, Makati City