MANILA: While she finds “kahindik-hindik” or horrifying the misuse of congress assistance, Commission on Audit (COA) Chairman Ma Gracia Pulido-Tan is not in favour of abolishing allocations for projects of senators and congressmen.
Though saddened by the mess, she said she did not believe the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) should be scrapped. She told reporters in a press briefing yesterday after releasing details on COA’s fund probe that the decision of whether the fund should be scrapped belongs to Congress.
Tan emphasised that the COA has limitations, such as to recommend investigations to the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice (DOJ). She said the COA cannot recommend the suspension of the PDAF system but rather ask “everyone to please follow the rules.”
“Following the rules emanates from them. It starts from the legislators themselves,” Tan explained, hoping that the COA report – which she referred to as a “report to the Filipino people” – will result in positive changes. Expressing her dismay, Tan noted that if Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle cried, she wailed when she found out how billions of pesos in funds were anomalously disbursed and misused from 2007 to 2009.
“Most of the NGOs were being managed or owned by the same persons,” Tan told reporters, baring the results of COA’s special audit of the PDAF releases from 2007 to 2009. But what appalled her, she said, was how the list of beneficiaries for some projects was manufactured and taken from the list of board and bar passers.
She bared that state auditors likewise uncovered after a three-year probe how some P123m ($3m) in public funds were used by some NGOs for payment of salaries and other administrative expenses.
The Philippine star
