THE municipal government of Carigara, Leyte hired 256 contractual and job order employees in 2019, costing the town’s coffers P18.93 million in wage payments and exceeding appropriations by P8.79 million.
In the 2019 audit of the municipality’s transactions, the Commission on Audit told the local government to stop the practice.
“Our audit of the disbursements for wages of contractual/JO personnel disclosed that the total …amounted to P18,928,631.72. The actual disbursement was P8,785,871.72 more than the amount appropriated for wages of contractual/JO personnel,” the audit team said.
When auditors dug into the records, they found that overspending was just one of the problems spawned by the excessive hiring of JO employees.
Several of them turned out to have reported for duty as utility personnel, janitors, and security guards, a violation of the procurement rules that require that such manpower by contractors to be chosen by the lowest bid submitted.
“We observed that the hiring of security and janitorial services were rendered only by individual persons instead of procuring the same thru competitive public bidding,” the COA said.
During exit conference, the Municipal Budget Officer claimed the wages for the JO hires did not exceed available appropriation as the local government was able to pass supplemental budgets for the purpose.
Auditors, however, pointed out that the supplemental budgets were only submitted during the exit conference and would still undergo verification.
Supporting documents, including performance reports, raised even more questions as auditors noted various anomalies.
“Our review of the accomplishment reports of the JO workers disclosed clerical/janitorial tasks that were duplicated several times and submission of pro-forma accomplishment reports in which only the names and period covered were indicated or changed,” auditors noted.
Some of these reports turned out to be “exact duplicated copies of the accomplishment report of other JO workers except for the name and signature.”
The municipal government’s Human Resource Management Office did not maintain the files of the JO employees and did not even bother to make a headcount of how many are charging wages against the town’s payroll.
“What they have is just a copy of the approved contracts, thus could not monitor the number of contractual and JO personnel hired as well as their functions, duties, and responsibilities,” the COA said.
Informed of the adverse findings, the HRMO said it was unaware that there was excessive hiring of contractual manpower and that it was the municipal mayor who decided how many to hire.
“The Human Resource Management Officer reasoned out that they are not aware that they have exceeded the wages for JO personnel. The limitation as to hiring of JO is the discretion of the Local Chief Executive,” the audit team said.
