SENATE Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III has asked his colleagues to be prudent in considering the proposed reproductive health bill as he questions millions in funds appropriated for the Department of Health.

For one, millions of pesos for similar programs sought by the RH bill are already being appropriated to the DOH through its Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health and Nutrition program.

Question is: Were the money actually used or were these misappropriated and misused?

In a privilege speech, Sotto questioned where some P423 million in funds appropriated to the MNCHN program of the DOH went.

He said inquiries with the local government units (LGUs) which were supposed to receive the funds showed they did not receive the money.

Sotto said that since 2008, the DOH has been supposedly granting LGUs for support of the respective Contraceptive Self- Reliance (CSR) Programs by as much as P1 million per region.

“The total grant to LGUs, Mr. President, is P423 million, distributed to 16 regional funds for MNCHN purposes only. The total amount available for LGUs in each region is P1 million for each province/highly urbanized city plus an amount proportionate to the estimated number of poor women of reproductive age in each province/highly urbanized city.

“Everything looks well and good up to this point except that, Mr. President, when I started my inquiries to our LGUs, whether they received the money indicated under the Family Health program of the Department of Health supposedly allotted to them, to my astonishment, the answer is no. They did not,” he added.

In the case of Ilocos Norte province for instance, Sotto said records showed that the LGU supposedly received more than P3.7 million from 2008 to 2010.