Ebdane, Puno face plunder raps over road tax misuse

MANILA, Philippines - The Senate committee on economic affairs has recommended the filing of plunder charges against Road Board chairman and Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. and executive director Rodolfo Puno for the misuse of P56.5 billion of the road user’s tax since 2001.

Economic affairs committee chair Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago also called for the filing of criminal charges before the Office of the Ombudsman against members of the Road Board, including Danilo Valero of the board’s secretariat.

In a resolution filed before the Senate last Oct. 14, Santiago recommended that the Motor Vehicles User’s Charge Act should either be amended or repealed, in order to provide for the deposit of road taxes with the national treasury, and for the inclusion of its appropriations in the national budget in order to assure legislative oversight.

Santiago also urged the Senate president to create a special Senate oversight committee on the road user’s tax.

“The road tax collections from 2001 to July 2009 amounted to some P56.5 billion, but the Commission on Audit (COA) concludes that the road tax has failed to fully achieve its objectives,” the senator said.

Under the 2000 Motor Vehicle User’s Charge Act (also known as the Road Tax Law), Santiago noted that the money collected under the act shall be earmarked and used solely and exclusively (l) for road maintenance and improvement of road drainage, (2) for the installation of adequate and efficient traffic lights and road safety devices, and (3) for air pollution control.

All money collected shall be deposited in four special trust accounts in the national treasury.

After the conduct of a public hearing last month, the economic affairs committee concluded that there have been “unconscionable road tax anomalies involving billions of pesos.”

Allotments on an election year

Santiago was particular about what she described as “unusually large amount of allotments obligated in 2007, an election year, amounting to P21.9 billion.”

The committee also found that there was unlawful overdraft in allotment amounting to P1.4 billion; unreconciled differences between the collections and deposits reported by the Land Transportation Office to the Road Board; and the certificate of deposits from the Bureau of Internal Revenue, for the period January 2001 and October 2008, amounting to Pl.2 billion.

She also questioned the inexplicable transfer to the Philippine National Police of the OYSTER (Out-of-School Youth Serving Towards Economic Recovery) program, without guidelines as to the number of workers and the manner of payment, amounting to P332.6 million.

The resolution still needs to be circulated among senators before it becomes fully recommendatory to the Office of the Ombudsman.

In her resolution, Santiago cited the 2008 COA report, which noted the “ominous sign of deliberate denial of transparency,” adding that the report “explained at length the other equally reprehensible abuses of public funds.”

She also noted that Ebdane promised during the Senate hearing last Sept. 25 to submit the missing documents no later than one week from date of hearing.

In 2007, the COA revealed that the budget was used to procure road safety devices while in 2008, Santiago said the COA reported an unreconciled difference of P1.2 billion between the amounts of P53 billion certified by LTO as collected and deposited to the special account against the amount certified by the treasury of P51 billion.

Santiago has branded the anomaly as “the biggest scandal of this decade,” because officials refused to observe guidelines, turning it into “secret” pork barrel funds for influential politicians. She added that the road tax is the government’s third largest source of tax revenue.