COA quizzes Borongan City on P1.04M travel expenses

BORONGAN City charged P1,040,870 travel expenses against the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund (CDRRMF) in 2023 and government auditors are not pleased.

The Commission on Audit (COA) said the CDRRMF is intended to improve the capacity of the community to efficiently manage all types of emergencies and transition easily from disaster response to sustained recovery.

The COA pointed out that utilizing the disaster fund for various trips goes against the provisions of the Joint Circular No. 2013-1 of the National Disaster Rusk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

Records of expenditures from January to December 2023 showed the city government spent the questioned amount on various trainings and courses in different parts of the country attended by CDRRM office personnel.

Among the trainings listed were the Benchmarking/Lakbay Aral in Cebu City held from June 19 to 23, 2023; the training on DRRM Strategies to Climate Change and Database Creation held in Basco, Batanes from February 28 to March 5, 2023; and the Regional Rescue Jamboree held in Catbalogan City from June 11 to 17, 2023.

“The various travels undertaken may have been related to disaster risk reduction and management, however, these administrative expenses should have been charged against the Local Disaster Office’s maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) allocation from the annual budget,” auditors pointed out.

Likewise, they questioned the inclusion of non-organic personnel of the city’s disaster office in the training when they are not expected to stay in the long term.

For the Lakbay-Aral in Cebu, 12 out of 23 persons sent were job order (JO) personnel, while for the Rescue Jamboree in Catbalogan City, the delegation of 28 included nine JO hires.

The COA noted that the City DRRM Office has 34 regular employees who could have benefited from the trainings to become disaster responders but, in their places, JO contract hires were sent.

The city accountant and the disaster officer agreed that they had overlooked the difference between items that can be validly charged