A calamity of government management
Credit to Author: BEN KRITZ, TMT| Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2019 16:20:27 +0000
IF the Office of the President, the National Housing Authority, and the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council were doing their jobs, the Commission on Audit reported last week, at least some of the victims of calamities such as 2013’s Bohol earthquake and Typhoon Yolanda and 2017’s destruction of Marawi City would not still be living as refugees years after the events.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes; it is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising that the current administration seems no better at faithfully accounting for and deploying large amounts of liquid funds in an ethical and practical way than any of its predecessors.
The headlined issue in the CoA’s latest report is some P1.4 billion in funds designated for disaster relief and other worthwhile purposes but instead being hoarded by the OP since at least 2010. The same CoA report also criticized the glacially-slow utilization of P2.0 billion transferred to the NHA and HUDCC for rehabilitation efforts in Marawi.
The P1.4 billion was a donation to the government by the Lopez-owned Benpres Holdings Corp. for “economic development according to a national priority plan,” including assistance to victims and areas affected by earthquakes, floods and other calamities. The original donation of P1.38 billion was turned over to the Treasury on December 30, 2010, where it has remained ever since; it had accumulated nearly P30 million in interest by the end of 2012, according to the CoA, and totals at least P1.412 billion.
If this was news to the Duterte administration it might be forgiven for having taken this long to do something about it, and the current leadership could even score a few political points, for what they’re worth, at the expense of former president BS Aquino 3rd, who had a well-known aristocratic distaste for even acknowledging the occurrence of calamities, let alone spending any money for relief and recovery.
However, this is at least the second time that the CoA has brought the unutilized funds to the attention of Team Duts; the latest observations were basically a rehash of points made in a report to Malacañang in 2016.
The other troubling matter raised by the CoA – and again, not for the first time – was the poor performance thus far of the NHA and HUDCC in managing the funds budgeted for rehabilitation efforts in Marawi. Of the P2.0 billion transferred to the agencies for assistance to the estimated 66,000 people still displaced by the five-month battle that destroyed the town two years ago, only about P113 million has been spent. For his part, President Duterte seems to have grown bored with the issue; back in April, he declared he would just as soon let the country’s big businesses see to the rebuilding of the city.
That viewpoint, while not without some merit, raises an interesting question.
As far as the Aquino administration is concerned, the culpability in not using the funds for a purpose intended by the donor is clear; the former president believed that earmarking funds for calamity-related purposes, whether mitigation, relief, or recovery was a waste of resources, and acted consistently to cancel projects and reduce or eliminate funding.
President Duterte, on the other hand, assured the people that he is not the same sort of sociopath as his predecessor, and for the most part has consistently acted as something different. Thus for him to obviously take a page out of the Aquino playbook and sit on disaster funds seems out of character, and does not have an obvious reason.
That is unless one considers the original source of the funds. Duterte has made no secret of his enmity for the Lopez clan, and has unambiguously suggested on several occasions that he would like to put their flagship asset, the ABS-CBN network, out of business for talking smack about him. Having already made a show of that sort of attitude, using the Lopez’s money for government programs might very well appear hypocritical.
That may only appear to be the case, and the government may have a perfectly reasonable explanation for letting refugees from multiple disasters wallow in interminable misery despite the ready availability of funds to assist them. If so, for everyone’s peace of mind, that explanation should be forthcoming quickly. Better yet, the government could accept the guidance of the CoA without argument for a change, and use the funds for their intended purpose.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
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