STATE auditors have flagged Batangas State University’s payment of P60,565,692.88 as honoraria for faculty overload in 2023 in five campuses, noting that this did not tally with the summary of teaching loads wherein faculty members declared that they do not have excess loads except for a few who nonetheless handled said loads “gratis.”
“The submitted Summary of Teaching Loads of Batangas State University (BatStateU) which showed the authorized maximum load as well as the excess load did not match the authorized loads approved by the Board of Regents,” the audit team said.
The observation was contained in a 42-page Compliance Audit Report released by the Commission on Audit on November 28, 2024.
A breakdown of the payments made showed P29.48 million was through the Pablo Borbon campus, P19.51 million through the Alangilan campus, P5.78 million through the Nasugbu campus, P3.8 million through the Malvar campus, and P2 million through the Lipa campus.
Inquiry by the auditors with the staff of the Academic Affairs revealed that each college encoded their summary of teaching loads so that confusion could have happened regarding the hours they were supposed to indicate in the maximum and excess loads.
An attachment in the audit report labeled Annex E was a Summary of Teaching Loads wherein the faculty members wrote “None” in the excess load column which the auditors took to mean that “there is no overload.”
“Presenting ‘none’ on the excess load column indicated that a faculty should not have been paid overload/honoraria,” the COA said.
To clarify the issue, the audit team recommended that the vice president for Academic Affairs be asked to submit a revised Summary of Teaching Load showing “the correct hours of the maximum load as well as the excess load,” the Commission added.
The BatStateU management said it had already submitted a revised Summary of Teaching Load which is now undergoing evaluation by the audit team.
