Fiscal mishandling plagues a good number of Philippine provinces, cities and towns. Governors, mayors and local councils spend taxpayers’ money freely, to the point of bankrupting their capitolios and municipios. Pundits attribute such lack of accountability to a large part to dynastic politics. Because politicos rotate local elective and appointive positions among spouses and offspring, they see no need for strict fund management. Confederate local treasurers cover up financial mischiefs and mistakes of the succession of related local chief executives.
It will take legislation, then full enforcement, and voter education to wipe out political dynasts. In the meantime, there are anti-graft rules to follow. On the side, local officials need training in financial management. This can be gleaned in just three of many special reviews conducted recently by the Commission on Audit:
• Province of Maguindanao. Audited was the capitolio’s spending in the period January 2008 to September 2009, under the Ampatuan family, before the infamous massacre. The COA discovered a total disregard for laws and rules. Instead of checks, cash advances totaling P1.862 billion were given to two disbursement officers. These were made in amounts reaching P296.95 million in one day, and in most cases one to five days from receipt of funds from the national or regional government.
In turn, the disbursement officers listed no specific purpose or infrastructure projects to justify their cash payments. The transactions ranged from P17,000 to as much as P11,263,000. There was one day when cash payments hit P98.25 million, a physical impossibility since the purported payees were located in different distant municipalities.
The COA further found out that no competitive biddings were held for procurements ranging from P250,000 to P8.28 million. Total of such negotiated procurements of goods and services: P805.608 million. Many payees denied having been contracted and paid for anything.
• City of Ozamiz. The special audit of the city hall was made for the period September 2009 to September 2010, covering two mayoral terms. Immediately unearthed were overdrafts of P56.23 million, P61.85 million, and P63.77 million, respectively, in June, July, and September 2010. Withdrawals from different funds showed an un-reconciled total of P3.99 million as of end-September 2010.
Meanwhile, funds for 51 barangays for the period audited remained unremitted, totaling P40.05 million. City hall employees’ personal contributions and the local government’s counterparts to the GSIS, Pag-IBIG and PhilHealth, respectively P7.12 million, P1.29 million, and P463,724, also remained unremitted as of September 2010.
And yet, wages supposedly paid to the employees were bloated. Appropriated by the city council as of September 2010 was P29.42 million, but actually paid out was P66.06 million. At least P13.47 million of the “wages” had no supporting documents, meaning, paid to ghost employees.
• Municipality of Sara, Iloilo. The mayor, municipal treasurer, and municipal engineer paid P300,000 for farm-to-market roads covering four barangays in 2006. The COA declared the expense to be overpriced because it only entailed repairs of old roads, not the paving of new ones. A private filling station was paid for gasoline and lubricants P1 million, which the COA found to be excessive because only P846,279 were procured.
The Sandiganbayan suspended the three officials last July 2012. The congressman also charged them with 30 counts of malversation and falsification of public documents. This allegedly was for padding the municipal payroll by P1.8 million for inexistent employees.
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CONSUMER QUERIES. Marilou Tabangay has two, for Manila Water Co.:
“(1) MWC changed its customer billing cycle, effective this month, from the old cutoff date of the 10th of the month to the 20th. So to adjust to this new cycle, its current statement of account per customer would have more than 30 days, in my case, total of 40. Meaning, there’s an additional consumption of ten days, which would generate a higher tariff per customer, because the factor rises every ten cubic meters. It’s the company’s decision to revise its billing cycle, so why make customers shoulder the additional tariff for it? The additional amount per customer might be small but, when you add up all the extra charges to all of us, it would be a profit bonanza for MWC.
“(2) There’s a five-percent discount to senior citizen-customers whose consumption does not exceed 30 cubic meters per month. Should this not apply to the first 30-cubic-meter consumption of all senior citizen accounts?”
(Regarding point (2), R.A. 9994, Expanded Senior Citizens’ Act of 2010, set the discount at the 30-cubic-meter limit. It would take another law to apply the discount to the first 30 consumed by seniors’ accounts. — JB)
Senior citizen Eddie Dulpina: “I’m enrolled in a Physical Therapy course. I asked City Hall’s Office of Senior Citizen Affairs for educational assistance, but they said it’s the (private) school that must give it. I wrote the school thrice in three months for tuition discount; up to now, they say, they’re still studying it.”
(The Dept. of Social Welfare and Development must look into this. R.A. 9994 does call for college, post-grad and vocational study grants to seniors, and enjoins government and private institutions to pitch in. But the lack of specifics in the law enables government bureaucrats and school administrators to point to each other. — JB)
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E-mail: jariusbondoc@gmail.com