Ghost projects, ghost expenses

Our country has been spooked by ghost employees and taxpayers money has been spirited away. Sadly, I’m not just talking about the recent ghost employee scandal hounding the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. It has happened and it’s probably happening in other government offices as well.

In my previous column, I put the spotlight on these ghost employees or the payroll fraud prevalent in all three branches of government. It’s particularly notorious in local government units and in Congress or the offices of our lawmakers. How ironic.

But as a reader pointed out, it’s not only ghost employees that are common in the Philippines but ghost projects and ghost expenses as well — from the southern Philippines to the northernmost tip of the country, our government executives have been trying to steal taxpayers’ money.

There are ghost farm-to-market roads, ghost schools, ghost hospitals, etc.

How fortunate this is and it speaks volumes on where we are now. No wonder we are lagging behind our peers when it comes to access to quality education; or that in remote areas, many still do not have access to quality healthcare or that our farmers are unable to access a bigger market for their produce.

In Tabuk, Kalinga for instance, the provincial government allotted P2.29 million supposedly for the improvement of the Mangali-Banagao farm-to-market in the province but the Commission on Audit (COA) disallowed the payment after discovering that the project was a fraud.

In a notice of disallowance dated April 10, 2019 addressed to then Governor Jocel Baac, COA supervising auditor Leah Daguio and audit team leader Bernadette Pekas said that the amount of P2.29 million which was allegedly used by the provincial government to pay the contractor of the project was disallowed in audit due to “non-accomplishment of all the items of work in the approved program of works that included clearing, grubbing and layout; common earth excavation, solid rock excavation and billboard.” (Sunstar, May 2019).

In Lanao del Sur, an investigation by authorities found out that in 2011, some P11 million in public funds were siphoned through a fictitious project involving the supposed construction of water