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MANILA - Senator Pia Cayetano believes she and other advocates of the Reproductive Health Law were deceived when the Health Department's allocation for family planning was slashed from the 2016 budget.

Health Secretary Janette Garin earlier revealed that the agency's P1-billion allocation for contraceptives was deleted during the bicameral conference.

In an interview on ANC's Headstart, Cayetano said she and even the other senators were shocked by the amendment as it was not reported to them through the proper course.

"What was brought to our attention is this provision. It's a special provision that says that this is how money will be spent. Itong vaccines and medicines 'pag binili should be spent for the poor families...And then may naka-highlight na amount," she said.

"This is very different from the line item na mababasa mo na ganon. But in any case, 'yung line item na ganyan, if you look at this, there is nothing here na binawasan ang family planning, wala. How will we know?" Cayetano added.

Finding out about the deletion only after President Aquino had signed the national budget into law, Cayetano expressed disappointment with her colleagues who represented the Senate version of the budget during the bicameral conference.

"I feel that the women and the advocates, be it men or women, even the chairperson of the Committee on Health, were deceived because we were not even given the benefit of this being debated on the Senate floor. Feeling ko kasi plano na 'yun eh," Cayetano said.

"I want to put a stop to this what I feel might be a trend that you can now hide, you can now change what you're doing and not report it to your colleagues, because that is exactly what happened," she added.

However, Senator Loren Legarda, who chairs the Senate Committee on Finance, earlier said that the DOH still has enough funds for contraception despite the cut. She also said that some of the P1-billion fund for family planning were realigned to upgrade the country's national defense.

READ: Legarda: DOH funds for contraceptives adequate

As for Senator Vicente Sotto III, who was said to have caused the elimination of the family planning budget, the amount deleted "was a mere small portion of their allocation for contraceptives" and that the funds for the programs under the RH Law remain in the DOH budget.

READ: Sotto admits budget for contraceptives scrapped

But Cayetano, one of the principal sponsors of the RH Law, insisted that her colleagues should have brought the particular change in the budget to the whole chamber's attention so as to avoid dubious conducts.

"I have no problem there. But when you take it out of another program that is funded by law -- that is a program that we know may mga ayaw talaga nyan, you do it under the cloak of deception where we don't even know that it was taken and it's such a huge sum -- it's very difficult to accept that it was fair distribution of funds because also it was never taken up," she said.

She also said Sotto has issue with condoms for "he just doesn't believe that condom is the answer to family planning."

"Senator Sotto told me that 'ito lang ang papapalitan ko on that condom issue.' We had a brief discussion about the items that are TRO-ed and it was such a small amount and I said 'you know what Tito, let's not make it an issue anymore, maliit lang 'yan. And he said naman na malaki pa 'yung natira kasi alam ko naman na one billion 'yung fund, this was in the Senate version," she said.

"And seperately he told me 'Pia, I'm your supporter. Whatever has to be done for RH hindi ko na 'yan papatulan.' That's what he told me. So I had no reason to believe na 'teka, teka, can we hold up the whole process kasi iisa-isahin ko ito. And even if I did, it is not there," she said.

Cayetano said she is studying available means to compensate the lost budget to support the affected family planning programs, and even the possibility of bringing the issue to the Supreme Court.