Government profligacy is an express train

The way both the national government and the LGUs have been over-spending, it's a wonder that they haven't collapsed as yet. Calls for austerity are just lip service, based on statistics that filter through despite efforts to sweep under the rug the reckless extravagance.

If both the national agencies and the LGUs were private corporations, they should have long ago crushed in utter bankruptcy without any hope of fiscal recovery. Consequently, their top brass, middle managers, plus a coterie of lower personnel could have landed in prison for graft and corruption, serious misconduct, grave mismanagement, gross criminal negligence, etc.

The only thin thread that holds the national bureaucracy in tenuous existence, but seriously wobbly, is the standby and built in vice of borrowing.

Like the sick joke among the rank and file who don't depend on their meager salaries, but on borrowings, so is the RP mainly dependent on foreign debts.

Public funds wastage is worst during election time. In the last presidential elections, GMA as admin candidate and controlling the purse, was an express train fund dispenser. The road user tax multi-millions personified by road/street sweepers, the Philhealth ID cards also in multi-millions, and the agricultural funds of almost a billion supposedly for farm fertilizer nationwide - including urban centers without any farmland - ended up wasted.

Chairman Andaya Jr. of the House appropriations committee has revealed that P4.5 B in cash advances of various agencies/offices of the RP remain unliquidated. Based on past history of unliquidated cash advances (UCA), they remain in red entries.

Another over-spending is its phone bills of P3.7B in 2004. There's no denying that communication expenses are necessary, but for an impoverished Philippines, P1.9B for its national agencies, P1.1B for government corporations (GOCCs), and P710 M for LGUs only betray the Filipinos' gift, nay, vice for gab.

There's also the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) which the AFP and the PNP deem quick to respond to the leftists' complaints for alleged human rights violations. Senator Madrigal revealed that the CHR has incurred UCAs in the amount of P21M, mostly on travels.

To recall, other cases of splurging by national agencies, including state schools with UCAs, had been featured in this column. Not lagging far behind as wastrels are the LGUs hereabouts led by metro-chartered cities.

The worst is the Pinamungajan officialdom granting themselves and all of its 67 total personnel a whopping P100T bonus per head, P35T of which was dubbed as "signing bonus" or "collective negotiation agreement (CNA)". The question is: How long will Visayas Ombudsman Miro resolve this open-and-shut case?

Coming next is Consolacion splurging P30T "signing bonus" to each employee in 2003 and 2004. Despite COA's explicit finding that the CNA grant in 2003 was illegal, it repeated the same in 2004 for which the COA ordered a refund of over P2 million for the 2004 release.

Significantly, even Cebu Province is allotting P10T each for the provincial employees' "CNA" or "signing bonus". The next question is: Will Cebu Province, like Consolacion, defy the COA advice not to grant the CNA which, as cited by COA, is considered by the Supreme Court as "a "form of additional compensation prohibited under the Constitution"? The SC as quoted by COA continued: "This desired conduct (collective negotiation) among civil servants should not come, we must stress, with a price tag, which is what the signing bonus appears to be".