Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 9) – The Commission on Audit (COA) gave mixed observations and recommendations in scrutinizing the Office of the President’s (OP) use of their 2019 budget.
In the annual COA report to OP published on Thursday, the state auditors flagged the Office of the Deputy Executive Secretary for General Administration (ODESGA) for allowing foreign travel of its officials even if travel requests were made in less than the prescribed period before their date of departure.
The ODESGA violated Section 3 of Memorandum Circular No. 35 which states that such travel requests must be submitted to the Malacañang Records Office at least 10 working days prior to the scheduled departure date. In extremely justifiable cases, requests should be made not later than two working days prior to departure.
Out of the 365 travel requests that ODESGA received in 2019, state auditors checked 49 for examination. Of the 49 requests, at least 31 or 63.26 percent were found to have violated OP’s own memorandum.
COA said this resulted into delayed processing and releasing of approved travel authorities by two to 185 days. This also translated to foreign travel without legal basis.
“We recommended that Management required ODESGA to strictly adhere to the required number of days to submit for travel authority, provided under Section 3 of MC No. 35, and late submission thereof shall not be entertained, unless otherwise fully justified,” the COA commented.
The state audit firm also separately flagged OP for not utilizing its unused grants and donations from Benpres Corporation that are worth ₱1.4 billion, which could have been allocated for economic development projects.
Based on the audit report, the OP said they are in the process of studying the Deed of Donation between them and Benpres to come up with necessary guidelines and financial plan on the untapped grants and donations.
Benpres Corporation, now known as the Lopez Holdings Corporation, is the flagship holding company of the businesses owned by the Lopez family. It includes power utility firm Manila Electric Company, real estate company Rockwell Land Corporation, and media conglomerate ABS-CBN Corporation.
On the other hand, COA praised OP for instituting reforms in improving the services of the 8888 Citizens’ Complaint Center.
The center, institutionalized through Executive Order No. 6 signed on August 2016, reported a 269.44% accomplishment for 646,658 calls and referrals.
“We commended Management with its accomplishment in terms of forwarded complaints and requests to the concerned agencies and its subsequent follow-ups,” the commission stated in its report.
State auditors pointed out, however, the number did not include around 792,685 calls abandoned in queue and those processed only in the “Interactive Voice Response,” which did not reach a live agent or a “call taker.”
The COA recommended that the complaint center adopt other communication channels as required by EO No. 6 such as SMS/text access, electronic mail, website, and social media. The OP responded that they had started the partial operations of the SMS/text service.
The state audit firm also took notice of the delay in the resolution of each complaint by 144 hours or six days. This was due to the conversion of the nine-day grace period of the 72 hours given to agencies to act on grievances coursed through the 8888 Citizens’ Complaint Center.
The audit report also noted that the 8888 complaint center manual lacked provisions on implementing administrative sanctions on agencies who failed to act on complaints.
The budget of the OP for 2019 was at ₱6.8 billion.
