MANILA, March 3, 2013-In the 15th Congress, Senator Loren Legarda has filed a total of 291 bills and resolutions, first and foremost of which is the Universal Healthcare Coverage Act.
Legarda, who chairs the Senate Committee on Climate Change, Committee on Cultural Communities, and Committee on Foreign Relations, filed 149 bills and 87 resolutions as principal author, and 25 bills and 30 resolutions as co-author.
On the very first day of the 15th Congress, the Senator filed seven bills—mandatory healthcare coverage, amended cheaper medicines, barangay greening and reforestation, additional benefits for kasambahays, establishing a migrant workers hospital, having barangay nutrition workers, and the magna carta for public school teachers.
“We aim to finish the Universal Healthcare bill before the 15th Congress ends in June because this will ensure that the 25 million poorest Filipinos will have access to Philhealth benefits,” Legarda stressed.
Legarda also filed several bills on health, the environment, women and children, welfare of Filipino workers, good governance, and indigenous peoples, among other issues.
Among the most notable of the bills she authored which were signed into law include the People’s Survival Fund Act, which provides a special fund for the financing of activities of local governments for climate change adaptation programs; the Kasambahay Law, which provides additional social benefits, such as SSS and Philhealth, for kasambahays; and the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, which aims to improve the efforts against human trafficking by covering attempted trafficking and accessory or accomplice liability and providing protection to trafficked victims.
She has also ushered the passage of 16 treaties, including the International Labour Convention (ILO) 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers; and the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC), for better protection and improved working conditions of seafarers.
“These are just among the measures that have been enacted into law, and in the next Congress, if reelected, I will not stop until we have accomplished the other measures, particularly on health and education, that would further protect and benefit Filipinos,” Legarda stressed.
