Flagrant violations of cash advances – II
Picking up from the previous piece… This is not to relish denouncing per se the pernicious free rein in public spending via the cash advances gravy train. More importantly, it’s to serve a fair warning to the new City Hall admin not to be tempted to dip their fingers into the treasury cookie jar on flimsy “precedents” in extravaganza galore.
At random, some of the pertinent auditing rules being run roughshod with impunity as regards the massive cash advances (CAs) cover the pre-requisites and the subsequent untimely and/or no liquidation. Firstly, pursuant to COA Circular 97-002, no cash advance shall be given unless for legally specified purpose; and, that payment out of the CAs shall be allowed only for amounts not exceeding P15,000 for each transaction, except when a higher amount is allowed by law and/or specific authority by the COA.
To stress, the 14-paged unliquidated cash advances (UCAs) show that the 6 to 7-digit transactions had non-governmental purposes, such as, festivals, celebrations, sports, socio-cultural activities, lakbay-aral something, “nightly activities”, ad nauseam. The phrases “legally specified purpose”, “allowed by law”, and “specific authority by the COA” are self-explanatory and need no over-stretching in loose interpretation, unless the motive be avarice for the color of cash.
The P15T ceiling is mandatory, unless the exception is met. But with the frequency of 6-digit CAs for innocuous purposes, even
Secondly, except for travel or similar CAs explicitly for personal utilization, as a rule the personnel authorized the CAs are bonded officers. Per COA Circular 97-002, each accountable officer with a total accountability of P2,000 or more shall be bonded. This is another violated auditing rule vis-à-vis the P6.2 M CAs of a member of the official family – not P62 M as inadvertently lacking the decimal point in the previous piece – and the 15 or so subalterns with each incurring 6-digit CAs. One doubts if all of them were/are bonded officers.
In fact, some have been railing against their being just “used” in obtaining CAs in huge sums, but the money turned over to another whom they could not say “No” upon “request” of their pecking game superiors. If, indeed, this be true, and certainly not improbable, that’s another irregularity done with impunity and, worth investigating now.
Thirdly, CAs shall be reported on – meaning liquidated necessarily – as soon as the purpose for which it was given has been served, but this was not observed. This serious aberration is a gross disregard of the mandate on timeliness to settle or liquidate. By the repeated non-compliance with timeliness, this auditing rule had been more honored in the breach than in the observance.
The jibe thus surfaced among the casuals – whose wages had been paid monthly, and always late – that their “5/6” petty loans in the City Hall premises could have been sourced from some UCAs.
What’s shockingly sickening is that the accounting and treasury honchos who are duty-bound to follow fiscal regulations tolerated the UCAs to accumulate over time. Even as late as March 30, 2007, there have been UCAs amassing like the Payatas hills and mounds of garbage. Typical is the case of Nerito Martinez whose travel CAs reached 17 times, and remain unrefunded. There are many others whose common denominator of violation is no timely liquidation and/or very, very late in refunding their CAs.
Why did the city accountant pass or approve their CAs, and the city treasurer release the money, when their records are replete with previous CAs not being perforce first settled?
To parody the great Bard of Avon, something is rotten not in Denmark, but right in Mandaue where auditing laws and rules were sneezed at, and insulted with dime-a-dozen shrug of the shoulders by the official fiscal watchdogs. (To be continued)
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