PB to Ombuds: Probe TESDA's unpaid debts

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Provincial Board is urging the Office of the Ombudsman Visayas to investigate and file the necessary charges, if the evidence warrants, against the people responsible for the unpaid debts of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority to its accredited training centers amounting to over P1 billion.

The board yesterday passed a resolution authored by PB members Victor Maambong and Wilfredo Caminero requesting the anti-graft office to look into it.

The resolution said that the anti-graft body is empowered to “investigate on its own, or on complaint by any person, and act or omission of any public official, employee, office or agency, when such act or omission appears to be illegal unjust improper or inefficient.”

It was reported that TESDA, during the administration of former secretary Augusto Syjuco, has ran into unsettled and outstanding arrears amounting to over P1 billion to its accredited skills training centers.

In fact, some of these training centers have already been pushed into a state of insolvency or have fallen into bankruptcy.

“It is already beyond cavil or dispute that many of our high school graduates and out-of-school youth find TESDA skills training and education as the only viable avenue by which they can earn the chance of acquiring marketable skills and eventual employment, either locally or abroad,” the resolution reads.

The resolution further states that to put this skills training program that has achieved laudable results into jeopardy is to put into the same state the future and welfare of our country’s manpower pool as well as that of our country’s development. (FREEMAN NEWS)