Turning a blind eye

Local media in Puerto Princesa are cursing writer Krip Yuson for labeling the former as practitioners of “envelopmental journalism.”

Krip was referring to the seemingly paid attacks of the local media on former Gov. Joel T. Reyes who is accused of being the mastermind of the assassination of Doc. Gerry Ortega. Among others, Reyes allegedly misused the Malampaya funds and was being criticized by Doc. Gerry about it that’s why he got killed.

Doc Gerry claimed he had proof from the Commission on Audit (COA) and the local media are also claiming the same. Funny thing is they can’t produce the evidence with some even absurdly claiming that the evidence was deleted in the COA website.

 They are claiming something that doesn’t exist and hitting Reyes for the alleged anomaly.

I wonder how come they don’t write anything about the irregularities committed by the officials of Puerto Princesa City, which now claims to be a highly urbanized and well-managed city. It can be gleaned from the COA audit reports for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009 that there are a lot of anomalies in the financial situation of the city.

The city government cannot be said to be well-managed when its financials are in a mess. The local chief executive, in this case Mayor Edward Hagedorn, should answer for this under the rule of command responsibility.

The amounts involve millions of taxpayers’ money, particularly the unliquidated cash advances, which for three consecutive years (2007-2009, the 2010 report is not yet available while the 2011 report will still be due next year) amounted to almost P450 million. Many believe that most of these cash advances were made at the mayor’s instance.

 Why are COA and the Ombudsman mum on this? There’s nobody in the media, particularly the locals, writing about the issue. They are instead busy crucifying Reyes with nary a shred of evidence.

In 2007, cash advances of P180.37 million were unliquidated at year’s end. Check disbursements amounting to P33 million were unrecorded in the books of accounts.

A total of P48.7 million for various expenditures were disbursed without the appropriate ordinance from the Sanggunian Panglunsod. The city did not remit the 30 percent share of its component barangays of real property tax collections.

 Long-term loans from the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Veterans Bank amounting to P809 million were obtained without the required feasibility study and appropriate financial statement analysis.

The balances of Property, Plant and Equipment (PPE) accounts amounting to P3.588 billion as of Dec. 31, 2008 were not supported by complete and accurate Inventory Report and property/subsidiary ledger cards. The submitted subsidiary balances when compared with the general ledger showed a difference of P2.184 billion, indicating uncertainty in the validity and correctness of the accounts.

 During the same year, the unliquidated cash advances even ballooned to P267 million or P86 million higher from the previous year.

 Titles of real property acquired by the City Government valued in the books at P478 million were not transferred to the city’s name. This cast doubts as to the validity of ownership by the city.

Again, in 2009 the balances of PPE accounts amounting to P3.79 billion as of Dec. 31, 2009 were not supported by complete and accurate Inventory Report and property/subsidiary ledger cards. The submitted subsidiary balances when compared with the general ledger showed a difference of P2.297 billion, indicating uncertainty in the validity and correctness of the accounts.

 The total unliquidated cash advances for the year amounted to P171.54 million. COA has been reiterating that the city management strictly complied with the provisions of COA Circular No. 97-002.

Titles of real property acquired by the City Government valued in the books increased to P587 million were still not transferred to the city’s name.

 The city government is also in violation of other financial transactions according to the COA but how come nobody among the local media is writing about it?

Who is now to blame

Philippine Airlines (PAL)’s outsourcing/spin-off of three of its non-core units, namely catering, ground handling, and reservations began yesterday, albeit on a difficult note.

It will be recalled that Malacañang ordered the third-party service providers to absorb the 2,400 employees of PAL that will be affected by the outsourcing program. Unfortunately, only one-fourth agreed to be absorbed.

So around 600 former PAL employees, together with 500 volunteers, undertook the task of reviving PAL’s operations, which for four days was hampered by the refusal of PAL’s striking employees to return to work.

The PAL Employees Association (PALEA) members’ refusal to work forced management to cancel flights for more than 16 hours at the start of the strike last Tuesday, inconveniencing more than 14,000 PAL passengers and resulting in losses for the company. This does not include the millions of dollars PAL lost as a result of PALEA’s illegal acts.

And because only around 1,000 or so employees are currently doing the work of 2,400 people, not to mention the still damaged equipment, PAL has only managed to restore to normalcy 60 percent of its operations.

So while PAL is slowly but surely rising from the ashes, the problems have just started for the striking PAL employees.

We’ve learned that PAL has hired top-notch lawyers to file the appropriate administrative, civil as well as criminal cases against these employees, who have allegedly violated a number of laws, rules and regulations.

Some of these employees in fact reportedly felt betrayed by their union leaders for getting the situation they are in. When the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) ruled in favor of PAL in its outsourcing bid, what the union should have done is bargain for better terms for the affected employees. What the union did instead was to go to Malacanang, which improved the package for the employees but only slightly.

PAL president Jimmy Bautista said last Friday that the time for negotiation has long passed, noting that he invited PALEA to a dialogue after the Office of the President threw out their petition seeking to invalidate PAL’s outsourcing plan.

PALEA members only have their intransigent leaders to blame for their current predicament, Bautista added.

Worse, the strikers cannot expect to get any sympathy from the public after having inconvenienced thousands of stranded passengers.

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