COA flags Davao City LGU over classroom shortage

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Audit (COA) has called out the Davao City government over its failure to utilize its special education fund to address classroom shortage.

Based on COA’s latest audit report, the city government appropriated P295.1 million for the construction of school buildings under its Special Education Fund, but only 25 percent or P74.481 million was utilized by the end of 2018.

“Despite the availability of funds... 34 out of 54 projects remain unimplemented,” the COA said.

Citing figures of the  schools division office in the last schoolyear, the audit body said there was a shortage of 368 classrooms in elementary schools; 1,006 in junior high schools, and 38 in senior high school.

The COA reminded the city government that Section 100 of the Local Government Code mandates the local school board to give priority to the construction, repair and maintenance of school buildings and other facilities of public elementary and secondary schools.

In a reply to the COA report, the city government said its engineer’s office is working with the city division of the Department of Education to address the classroom shortage and assist in the processing of necessary documents to expedite the projects.

In the same report, the COA put to task the city government for failure to implement 27 infrastructure projects worth P102.657 million to be sourced from its Development Fund.

 “Underutilization of available resources is commensurate to underperformance since available resources were not utilized to their full potential,” the audit body said.