SENATORS Cynthia Villar and Pia Cayetano on Wednesday urged the Department of Health to devolve its funding for the feeding program to local government units.

Villar said the feeding program can be better implemented by the LGUs under the guidance of the Nutrition Council.

“This is a function that we can devolve to the LGUs. They said that they asked the help of the LGUs, I want to know how do they pick the LGUs and what is the LGUs counterpart because we will be giving a lot to the local governments,” Villar said during the hearing on the DoH budget.

The National Feeding Program aims to combat malnutrition among children.

Cayetano echoed Villar’s suggestion.

“There really has to be a limit on what the national government can spend and efficiently carry out,” she said.

LGUs receive around 40 percent of the national internal revenue taxes collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue as their internal revenue allotment.

Their IRA is seen to increase by 27.61 percent next year because of the Mandanas-Garcia ruling which allows LGUs to collect shares from all national taxes collected.