House Majority Leader and Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez said Sunday the leadership of Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano will ensure the swift passage of President Rodrigo Duterte’s priority measures following the election of lawmakers to key positions in Congress.
“We are now organized to deliberate President’s priority measures. The plenary has already elected our colleagues to the major positions,” Romualdez said.
“Both Speaker Cayetano and I gave the commitment that we are going to work double time. I am elated that the newly elected minority leader, Pastor Benny Abante, shares the same view. With this shared commitment, I have no doubt that this will be one of the most productive Congress ever.”
Cayetano said he was committed to a proposal creating a full-pledged department to cater to the needs of migrant Filipino workers and their families.
“The [creation of the] OFW Department is the second bill now being read in Congress. In our case, I have authored it with [Taguig City] Congresswoman Lani Cayetano and Deputy Speaker Paolo Duterte,” Cayetano said.
“This is what the President wanted since 2016. I have proven it to myself when I was still the Department of Foreign Affairs chief that no matter what I and the President would do, there must be one that must take charge of the welfare and protection of our OFWs. There must be an agency that would look for opportunities for them abroad.”
Deputy Speaker and Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Ray Villafuerte said the House leadership would support the creation of the Department for Filipino workers abroad as well as the Departments of Disaster Resilience and Department of Water Resources, alongside with the approval of wage increases for government workers.
“The House of Representatives, under the leadership of Speaker Cayetano, would make a big push for the immediate consideration of the new salary hike and the creation of three new departments as endorsed by the President in his fourth State-of-the-Nation Address”•more so now that the head of the state economic team has neither raised any objection to nor funding concerns over these proposals,” Villafuerte said.