265 dismissed, resigned cops still getting P36.8 M in salaries

MANILA, Philippines – A total of 265 dismissed, resigned, and terminated policemen were able to get their salaries and encash paychecks amounting to P36.8 million, despite their separation from the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Because of this, PNP chief Director General Avelino Razon Jr. ordered yesterday the PNP Finance and Legal Services to take legal action against former police personnel by sending them demand letters to recover payments “inadvertently” made to them.

“If these people will not heed our demand to return the overpaid amount, we will file criminal and civil cases against them,” Razon said.

Earlier, the PNP was able to recover P40 million in overpayments from 995 retired, 269 deceased, and 59 suspended personnel. Payments for these receivables were deducted from the pension and benefits received by these personnel.

Last year, the Commission on Audit noted overpayments amounting to P76.8 million made to 1,739 deceased, retired, suspended, and dismissed personnel.

“We have initiated some administrative measures to ensure that the names of retired, deceased, and dismissed personnel will be deleted from the payroll automatically upon issuance of their separation orders,” Razon said.

PNP spokesman Chief Superintendent Nicanor Bartolome said the overpayments were due to administrative oversight wherein some names of deceased, retired and dismissed personnel were not immediately deleted from the master file.

Bartolome said because the names were not deleted on time, either the Computer Service continued to print their paychecks or the Finance Service went on to credit payments to their ATM payroll accounts.