Chiz wants DSWD, DND execs probed

MANILA, Philippines - Officials of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of National Defense (DND) must be investigated to find out if they had misused government funds, a senator said yesterday.

Sen. Francis Escudero said the Commission on Audit (COA) and concerned prosecutorial arms of the government must determine whether Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman and her subordinates should face criminal and administrative charges.

“(Charges) should be filed,” he said in Filipino. “A crime is not committed without the criminal.”

The COA has asked the DSWD to account for about P1 billion allocated for 364,000 families whose names were “missing” from the database of the conditional cash transfer program in 2013.

Interviewed over dzBB radio, Escudero said the joint congressional oversight committee will also check reports that the DND might have misused some of its Quick Response Funds (QRF). 

“We will be having a hearing on the third week of January to determine what was done, what was failed to be done by various concerned agencies during the past calamities,” he said. 

Escudero was mum when asked if a full-blown investigation should be conducted in the same way that the Department of Justice (DOJ), National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Office of the Ombudsman were tapped to investigate the pork barrel fund scam.