Senate panel sets probe on government housing projects

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate committee on urban planning, housing and resettlement will start this week its investigation into alleged irregularities on the implementation of housing programs for communities hit by natural and man-made calamities in the past years.

Committee chairman Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito submitted a resolution calling for the probe after he and other senators inspected a few weeks ago several relocation sites and saw the poor living conditions of displaced families in either substandard or unfinished shelters.

“I don’t think there’s a valid excuse for this ongoing injustice for the hundreds of thousands of families in many parts of the country that have been hit by disasters in the last few years,” he stressed. 

Ejercito said that “several years after the occurrence of disasters, resettlement and relocation of affected families have not been completed,” citing the destruction and deaths caused by Tropical Storm Sendong in 2011, Typhoon Pablo in 2012, the Zamboanga siege in 2013, and Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013, among others.

He noted initial government figures that show about 200,000 families in various disaster areas are still waiting for shelters and those who were given houses suffer from poorly built houses. 

The senator criticized previous National Housing Authority officials for failing to address the needs of the affected families, many of whom were hit with diseases due to inadequate sanitation facilities in the NHA-built houses.

“There are reports of irregularities in the resettlement programs in these disaster areas including, but not limited to, the slow implementation of the resettlement projects, use of substandard materials for the housing units, unsuitable location of resettlement areas and the lack of basic utilities like water and electricity,” Ejercito pointed out in his resolution.

Meanwhile, the Commission on Audit (COA) has directed the Office of the Civil Defenses (OCD) to press the Department of Budget and Management’s procurement service (PS-DBM) to speed up its delivery of purchased and paid disaster-response items and office supplies.

In the annual audit report published on its website over the weekend, COA noted that the PS-DBM only delivered one percent or P5.1 million worth out of the P443.511 million of non-food items and office supplies that were bought and paid for last year by the OCD.

After establishing that the PS-DBM delivered only P1.868 million worth of non-food items, it noted that P171.825 million worth of non-food items and P338,428 worth of office supplies remain undelivered.

It added that despite the dismal delivery record, the OCD still went on last year to issue checks totaling P271.348 million for similar purchases – P267.975 million for non-food items and P3.371 million for office supplies.

“For CY 2017, the OCD transferred the total amount of P271,347,902.05 to PS-DBM for the procurement of office supplies and non-food items for distribution to disaster victims, in addition to the prior years’ balance of P172,163,747.76,” the COA report read.

It explained that since only P5.11 million or 1.16 percent of the total transferred funds of P443.51 million were delivered during the year, it left a balance of P438.40 million.

The COA explained further that of the total amount paid to PS-DBM in 2017, at least P25.81 million were transferred in the last quarter of the year, which violated the General Appropriations Act of 2017.

“The transfer was made to avoid the lapsing of NCA (notice of cash allocation) at year-end,” the audit report said.

The COA said the OCD management acknowledged audit observations and promised to make representation with the PS-DBM for the immediate delivery of the goods purchased in 2017 and to demand refund for the undelivered items in prior years.

It stressed that immediate distribution to disaster victims of non-food items such as mattresses, blankets, plastic sheets, containers for water, cooking utensils and hygiene kits is a key component of the OCD’s disaster response mandate. – With Elizabeth Marcelo