THE Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Monday said it has filed criminal charges against 23 barangay officials found to have been involved in alleged anomalies related to the distribution of the government’s emergency cash assistance under the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP).
Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said four more barangay officials will be charged in the next few days as authorities are still on a “case build-up” against 110 others.
Año said the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) lodged the complaints against the 23 officials before the Prosecutors Office of the Department of Justice for violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (RA 3019) and the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act (RA 114690).
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said the DOJ will prioritize the investigation of the criminal complaints against the 23 erring barangay officials.
“I will direct our prosecutors to give priority attention to the preliminary investigations of these criminal complaints,” Guevarra said in a text message.
Año said the accused barangay officials included barangay chairmen, kagawads (councilmen), treasurers, secretaries, employees, purok leaders and even social workers.
On May 4, President Duterte offered a P30,000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of barangay executives involved in anomalous practices in the distribution of the P5,000 to P8,000 government cash subsidy to poor families.
The President made the offer after he got reports about one kagawad Danilo Flores of barangay San Agustin in Hagonoy, Bulacan who allegedly forced residents to give to him P3,500 out of their 6,500 SAP assistance.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has earlier filed graft charges against Flores and two other barangay officials for allegedly conniving to swindle their constituents into giving parts of their cash subsidy supposedly on the instructions of their town mayor, who subsequently denied their claims.
DILG undersecretary and spokesman Jonathan Malaya said the offense of the 23 barangay officials includes splitting, falsification of the master list, and getting a cut from the SAP beneficiaries.
Malaya said the national government and the public were counting on these barangay officials to facilitate the distribution of the SAP assistance but “they were like leeches who suck the blood out of the government’s SAP assistance.”
Four of the erring officials, Malaya said, are from Bacolod City who reportedly connived to take P4,000 of the P6,000 of the SAP assistance each given to seven beneficiaries.
In Peñablanca town in Cagayan, Malaya said a barangay kagawad reportedly demanded a P4,000 share from the P5,500 assistance that a female beneficiary received for supposedly including her name in the master list.
The other cases still under investigation include a barangay chairman from Tondo, Manila who was accused by five individuals of picking the SAP beneficiaries in his area, who turned out to be mostly his friends and relatives.
Malaya said there was also a complaint against a barangay official from Pasay City who included the employees of his laundry shop as SAP beneficiaries. Malaya said the barangay official then made the employees to sign papers which showed that cash were their salaries. — With Ashzel Hachero
