Pinamungajan's computerization, a "white elephant"

CEBU, Philippines – The computerization program of Pinamungajan remains unfunctional since its installation last year.

The Commission on Audit cited the lack of proper planning as the main reason why the project has become a white elephant.

"Had there been proper planning in the installation of the computerization programs for the integration of business permit and licensing system, real property tax system and treasury collection system, the municipality could have obtained the desired result," state auditors said.

In 2008, the municipality of Pinamungajan entered into a contract with Hi Trend Trading for the network system integration of business permit and licensing system, real property tax system and treasury collection system.

The agency expects that the system would result in the increase collection of business and real property taxes and facilitate the preparation and easy access of financial reports.

The computerization program was funded out of the P3.9 million loan obtained by the municipality from the Philippine National Bank.

The contract was fully paid in 2008 and the municipality had started paying the interests and loan amortization.

However, COA said that more than a year after, the municipality has not obtained the desired results.

"When the program was installed a year ago, the Municipal Assessor's Office had not finished the encoding of real property units," the audit report says.

COA learned from interviews conducted with the concerned employees that the computer system is not yet functional, encoding of real property units has just been completed.

"Moreover, some employees who were trained for operation of the system are no longer there. It was learned that the training of another set of employees has just been started early this year," COA said.

Thus, computation of taxes and licenses, as well as preparation of reports, is still being done manually.

COA has advised the municipality that there should be proper planning before a program or activity is being implemented, so that the intended results could be obtained. (FREEMAN)