Senate to tackle Tesda ‘offer’ to Lacson

The Senate will tackle with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) the P5-million “allocation fund” that the agency allegedly offered to Sen. Panfilo Lacson.

“We’ll clarify it with Tesda during budget deliberation,” Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian said on Sunday in an interview with dzBB.

Lacson, in a series of posts on X on Saturday, said he had “declined unequivocally” the allotment offer made to me through my Senate staff.” Tesda Director General Jose Francisco “Kiko” Benitez denied authorizing such an allocation for the senator and said his agency is now investigating that matter.

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Gatchalian said he has not received any similar offer from Tesda, vowing to get more information specifically on who cooked up the scheme, if ever, before considering launching an inquiry to determine its extent.

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“I did not receive such an offer. I do not know the details, but personally, I did not receive anything like that,” he said. “Before, I’ve also been hearing about the supposed leadership fund but in my almost 11 years in the Senate, I’ve not been offered with that.”

Gatchalian said he knows Benitez personally and has been working closely with him at the Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom).

Probe on Tesda staff

“I personally know him. In fact, he has been there for a long time but I have not received such an offer,” he added.

But the Senate leader is not discounting the possibility that a staff member of Tesda could be behind the supposed offer.

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“We’ll get more information first. I want to know what really happened. Maybe it was just a staff [behind it]. Sometimes there are staff who try to impress politicians, we don’t know. So we’ll get more information,” said Gatchalian.

“I’m very close with Secretary Benitez because of our work in Edcom. He would have just told me ‘Pare, Sen…’ but nothing like that,” he added.

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Lacson said a certain “Stephanie” made the offer to his staff last week. He said he had considered an entrapment operation but eventually decided against it. “I took pity on Stephanie who apparently was only following instructions,” he said.

Benitez said Tesda’s investigation would zero in on the identity of the individual behind the unauthorized exchange and “misrepresentations.” He said administrative or criminal charges will be filed against anyone found liable.

“We welcome the opportunity to get to the bottom of this matter and fully support efforts to establish the facts,’’ he said on Saturday.

‘Liaison officer’

On Sunday, Lacson said he had instructed his staff to provide Benitez with all information “to help their internal investigation get to the bottom of the issue.”

The senator added that initial information showed that “Stephanie” was a “liaison officer” assigned to contact him. Since he had no way to immediately determine if “Stephanie” was a fixer for Tesda, Lacson decided to expose the “offer” to make it clear that he had not accepted it.

Gatchalian admitted that many government units go to his office almost every day to submit requests for certain projects or programs.

Legitimate projects

“What I do is refer them to concerned agencies and I leave it up to them to decide whether or not these projects are legitimate and need to be provided with assistance. As to the allocation fund, that I do not know… Even in our letter we tell the agencies to review the programs, or if the concerns are legitimate, then they should help them,” he said.

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“It is not right to allocate funds just because you want yourself to look good or make a good impression on a senator or politician. It is not good to offer money that belongs to the government. Why are you giving it away when it is not yours to give? It’s the people’s money and it should be given to those who really need it,” he added. INQ