Int’l group appalled by pork scam

Members of the California-Nevada Philippine Solidarity Task Force PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK.COM

LUCENA CITY, Philippines—A member of an international mission group visiting Quezon province to extend help to victims of human rights violations and militarization has expressed disgust over the pork barrel scam.

“It is appalling that government officials are squandering funds that come from the toiling people,” Paige Rawson, representative of the California-Nevada Philippine Solidarity Task Force, said in a press release sent by the Save Bondoc Peninsula Movement (SBPM).

Rawson observed that the country had a “hollow GDP (gross domestic product) whose benefits go to only a small number of corporations.”

Rawson is part of a group dubbed by the SBPM as an International Solidarity Mission that was on its first day of extending free medical and dental service to the poor residents in Catanauan town on Monday.

SBPM spokesman Pedro Gonzales said volunteers of the group were doing what they could to help Filipino victims of landlessness and state violence when they heard how “the greed of the country’s leaders wastes away taxpayers’ money.”

Gonzales said those involved in the scam should be held accountable.