COA: DAR-7 did nothing to take back P2.5 million owed

CEBU, Philippines – The officials of Department of Agrarian Reform-7 are not strictly implementing the recommendation of the Commission on Audit to compel their personnel to refund the P2.5 million paid to them as medical allowance, rice allowance, cost of living allowance and birthday bonuses that were disallowed by the state auditors.

The COA-7 officials again recommended that DAR should pursue the collection of the disallowed funds amounting to P2,545,249 and to require the concerned person-nel to first settle their obligations before they will be issued clearances once they retire or if they resign from government service.

It was learned that some of those DAR officials and employees who still have an obligation to the government have already retired from government service.

COA said that the P195,000 DAR had spent when it granted medical allowances to its personnel in 2007, the P2,081,249 for their cost of living allowance, the P175,000 expenses for rice allowance and P94,000 birthday allowance to its personnel in 2003 were considered highly questionable.

The state auditors have already recommended that the concerned DAR personnel should be required to refund the amount that they received in 2003 and 2007, but it was learned that the recommendations were never implemented.

The rules and regulations on the settlement of accounts provides that in line with the principle of fiscal responsibility the head of the agency is primarily responsible for all government funds and property pertaining to his office.

The procedure is that if a person is aggrieved by a disallowance ordered by the COA they can appeal the order in writing within six months, otherwise the disallowance shall become final and executory.

Meanwhile, state auditors also discovered that there were six assorted vehicles donated to the DAR-7 regional office by the Belgian Integrated Agrarian Reform Sup-port Project in Dumaguete City that were not reflected in the agency's book of properties.

These vehicles were a Mitsubishi Adventure worth P715,000; a Toyota Hi-lux worth P541,614; a Toyota Prado worth P584,767; a Honda XL motorcycle wroth P61,000, and two Yamaha Cryptons worth P45,910 each. -/BRP (FREEMAN)