Tesda a test case for Senate oversight function
The Senate’s penchant for conducting an investigation into anything it wishes will be turned on its head by the report of the Commission on Audit (CoA) that the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) spent millions on “ghost scholars” and training centers in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
The issue will hit home because Tesda then was under the leadership of Mr. Joel Villanueva, who is a newly elected member of the Senate.
The public will keenly watch whether the Senate will be as eager to investigate one of its own members as it does other government officials and agencies.
Our senators today act nearly automatically in filing resolutions for the conduct of an inquiry whenever they read or hear of something irregular that has happened in our public life, or in the executive branch of government.
It is fair and reasonable for the media and public to ask whether our senators will move to inquire into CoA’s report of irregularities in Tesda, or will just look away because one of their colleagues happens to be principally involved.
The rationale for a serious Tesda inquiry is clear and straightforward.
In an official report, the CoA declares that Tesda funded “ghost scholars” in years 2015 and 2016 under its training programs. At the time, Mr. Villanueva was the incumbent Tesda director.
COA said Tesda’s ghost scholars and training centers received funding of P10 million from the government, of which P9.3 million was paid to AMA Computer College (AMACC) in Sta. Mesa in 2015.
The CoA report specifically questioned Tesda’s use of more than P10 million in funds for training programs that had fictitious scholars, teachers and training centers.
In its 2017 audit report, the state audit agency said funds were apparently misused after thorough validations were conducted on two Technical Vocational Institutions (TVI): AMACC and the Technivoc Institute Corp. (TIC).
Auditors said they were not able to validate 195 of the 310 scholars for various reasons, such as incorrect phone numbers, while some 77 students said they were regular students of AMACC Fairview Campus and were not participants in a Tesda scholarship training.
This is not all. CoA also flagged Tesda for alleged ghost scholars and other issues in 2014, for irregularities in Tesda’s use of funds from the Aquino administration’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which the Supreme Court (SC) had declared illegal and unconstitutional.
The audit agency said Tesda may have used some P1.1 billion in DAP funds in 2011 to finance ghost scholars. CoA found that 61 of the supposed scholars attended multiple training courses simultaneously, 46 never attended any training course, while 218 could not be verified as they had false contact numbers.
Handling of the Tesda case by the Senate is important for two reasons:
First, it will put to the test the Senate’s sense of responsibility when the object of oversight is one of its own members.
Second, it will compel our government to decide where the investigations of irregularities are best conducted.
The work of the congressional committees is to exercise oversight over the executive agencies of government.
The professional investigation of irregularities, on the other hand, properly belongs to the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice, which encompasses the National Bureau of Investigation.
The matter has been well defined by the US Supreme Court in a famous ruling, Watkins vs the United States (1957).
The entire exercise is about making government accountable to the people. This also includes Congress and its members.
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