GMA’s P1.28B youth program tainted with irregularities – COA

FORMER President Gloria Arroyo’s program to hire out-of-school-youth may have had a noble intention but its implementation was riddled with irregularities that even the Commission on Audit (COA) cannot say if the beneficiaries received the salary promised them.

In fact, the Audit commission doubted if the street sweepers employed under the Out-of-School Youth Serving Towards Economic Recovery (Oyster) program that had a funding of P1.28 billion were justly paid because the project lacked “structured monitoring mechanism” from the two agencies ordered to implement it—the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Philippine National Police (PNP.)

Under a memorandum of agreement, the DPWH would be the funding agency, while the PNP would be the recruiting agency for the 2,000-strong Oyster program.

For six years, the Department of Budget and Management released an aggregate of P1.28 billion to the DPWH’s Central Office, which was forwarded to its own National Capital Region (NCR) Office. In turn, the funds were “transferred to and fully expended” to the PNP.

The commission reported that as of June 30, 2010, the DPWH transferred P471.24 million to the PNP Headquarters Office and P811.041 million to the PNP National Capital Region Police Office since November 2005.

For January to June 2010, P154.308 million should have been used to pay the salaries of the workers, COA said.

However, the commission said there was no way of knowing if those enrolled in the program were properly compensated since there was no report from the PNP.

“There was no information . . . how the workers benefited from the program as there were no monitoring reports attached to the liquidation by the PNP of the funds transferred to them by the DPWH from which these information may be verified,” the audit report revealed.

The street cleaners were supposed to receive P231 a day.

The commission added that the PNP even increased the hiring of street sweepers from 2,000 to 4,000 workers “and the DPWH-NCR provided additional funds for the increase.”

For lack of monitoring scheme, COA could not also trace how effectively the Oyster workers were conducting the maintenance of roadsides in the NCR.

The out-of-school workers were supposed to clean 1,005.11 kilometers of roadside in Mega Manila, as well as paint bridges, trim trees for beautification and vegetation control, and add manpower support to other government agencies.

Under the DPWH-PNP agreement, the DPWH would “prepare budget estimates,” while the PNP would “pay the workers promptly.”

The Audit commission, however, said “PNP is not the proper agency to undertake maintenance and cleaning of roadsides since such function is not included in its mandate.”

“Considering that the program ended in June 2010, a report should have been prepared to document the project outputs or accomplishments. The propriety and reasonableness of the budget estimate to which the fund transferred was based was not evaluated,” it added. –JOHN CONSTANTINE G. CORDON REPORTER, Manila Times