OWWA chief defying spending guidelines

Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) chief Wilhelm Soriano is probably in for more trouble.

This, as the Commission on Audit (COA) reported yesterday that Soriano is courting possible charges of illegal disbursement of funds for allowing the operations of OWWA without an approved budget.

Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas said no OWWA budget has been approved until now simply because the Soriano-led welfare agency has refused to follow the board of trustees’ spending guidelines.

Even without an approved budget, OWWA is still disbursing funds, with Soriano reportedly insisting that the agency is authorized to allocate funds even without the approval of the board of trustees.

Earlier, the OWWA board of trustees, which Sto. Tomas chairs, ordered the agency to refrain from disbursing funds starting July 1 until it has submitted a proposed budget for this year.

For the past five years, Sto. Tomas said OWWA has, on the average, spent more than it has collected from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), thus endangering the agency’s operations.

Last year, OWWA, she said, spent a total of P637 million while collecting only P585 million the previous year. This year, it proposed a budget of P882 million against a collection of P703 million.

Sto. Tomas said the board of trustees imposed a budget cap of 80 percent of the 2001 collection, to progressively go down to 70, 60 and 50 percent in the coming years in a bid to build up reserve funds for OWWA.

Sto. Tomas said OWWA must submit a budget proposal based on this requirement, or Soriano will have to do some explaining to COA.

Napoleon Madriaga, the labor department’s resident auditor, said all government agencies are required to have an approved budget and failure to comply would mean possible charges of illegal disbursement.