Workers, organizations called to settle obligations to city

Cebu - Days before the Commission on Audit is scheduled to conduct the annual audit on all financial transactions of the Cebu City government, the City Council wants to know who among its officials and employees still have unliquidated cash advances.

The Council agreed to make a request for the City Accounting Department to furnish the councilors with a list of city officials and employees who still have financial obligations, as well as non-government and people’s organizations that were provided by the city with financial assistance.

Councilor Joey Daluz III, chairman of the City Council committee on budget and finance, said that the councilors “should always know and be fully appraised of the real financial picture of the city, especially in the matters of disbursement and financial accountabilities.”

State auditors always remind city officials to strictly impose the policy that salaries of those who fail to liquidate their cash advances, after two months, should not be released or that they should be compelled to account for the funds.

Meanwhile, the COA policy stipulated that people and non-government organizations shall not be granted another financial assistance if these groups could not liquidate the funds granted to them in a year period. The COA is also very strict on its policy which reads that the “financial assistance granted to POs and NGOs shall not be used to pay the salaries and other benefits of the concerned groups, but is intended for projects that would benefit the public.”

Daluz also asked Dr. Myrna Go, director of the Cebu City Medical Center, to explain on complaints from indigent patients, being raised before the Council that they were made to pay for their medicines during their confinement at the CCMC when inventory showed that the said hospital has “many unused drugs and medicines.”

The hospital’s annual budget, however, showed that the city is only providing P14 million for the drugs and medicine of CCMC for its whole-year operation. — Rene U. Borromeo/MEEV (THE FREEMAN)