City councilor pushes for prompt release of scholars’ allowance

CEBU, Philippines - To avoid delay in the release of the allowance of Cebu City scholars, Councilor Sisinio Andales has lobbied to cut down the disbursement procedure.

 Andales, in an executive session yesterday, said the procedure needs to be shortened to one month from four months to avoid any delay of the allowance’s distribution.

 This concern was tackled after some city scholars raised concern over the delay in the release of their allowance.

The allowance for the first semester last year was reportedly released only last December.

 But City Accountant Mark Salomon said the suggestion is not viable due to some constraints in the billing process.

 “It can’t be shortened because we rely with a system. We can’t just pull out the data from the schools and place it abruptly on our system,” he said.

 “This is a government program and it involves government funds and we can’t just give it to anybody. We can’t compromise the documentation,” he added.

 The delay, he said, lies in the billings from the accredited schools which will take at least a month from the conclusion of the enrolment period. Based on the memorandum of agreement, the schools are given one month to submit the billings.

 The billing enumerates the scholars enrolled for the school year.

 The city has at least 13,000 scholars receiving P10,000 each for tuition fees, P1,000 for their supply allowance and P5,000 for transportation allowance per semester for scholars from the mountain barangays.

 As explained, Salomon said that after the submission of the billing, it will be forwarded to the City Scholarship Committee with certifications from the Department of Education attached.

 The scholarship committee will then make a payroll to be transmitted to the budget office for appropriation then to the accounting department for pre-audit “whether or not those enumerated in the payroll exists in the building.”

The payroll will then be forwarded to the treasurer’s office for disbursement.

 Salomon said the whole process takes approximately four months since every transmission reaches at least three weeks to finish.

 “The three to four delay is a very reasonable delay because the cut-off for the enrolment for first semester is June 30 and it will take at least one month for the school to prepare for the billings…we have to check the integrity of the list of the scholars because we can’t afford that those who did not enroll will continue to receive the subsistence,” he stressed.

 A representative from Cebu Institute of Technology-University concurred with Salomon, saying one month is “practical and reasonable” because they still have to attend to other non-city scholars.

 However, Andales said the process is “maybe reasonable but (it) is not fair to the scholars.”

“There must be ways and means to shorten the process,” he added.

 Councilor Nestor Archival, the presiding officer, suggested to tap the city’s Management Information and Computer Services to computerize all the listings.

“This is a system and we should try to change and improve it to hasten the process,” he said.

Councilor Lea Japson also recommended the creation of a database of all the city scholars to help reduce the extensive process.  (FREEMAN)