AN official of the Commission of Audit (COA) yesterday blamed manpower shortage for its failure to detect irregularities in flood control projects.
COA auditor Tracy Ann Sunico appeared before the Blue Ribbon committee which is investigating kickbacks and other anomalies involving substandard and “ghost” flood control projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways, especially in Bulacan.
Sunico, during grilling by senators, said COA has been having staffing problems after around 100 plantilla positions in the agency were removed in 2023.
Sen Sherwin Gatchalian said COA was supposed to be the “last safeguard” against irregularities, and could have prevented persistent floodings in the country.
Gatchalian said an engineering district office of the DPWH has the power to plan, conduct biddings, implement projects, and pay contractors for finished projects. This is where COA should be strict, he said, when it conducts a post-audit of finished and paid projects.
“Once a project has been paid, the COA steps in to conduct a post-audit. So, this means, ghost projects would be detected at the post audit level,” Gatchalian said in Filipino.
Sunico said that should be the case.
Gatchalian said the COA team assigned in Bulacan should have also flagged projects which were completed in just a matter of days. He said a project was declared 46 percent complete two days after it was started.
In another instance, he said, a river bank protection project was declared 89 percent finished in just 15 days.
Sunico talked about the manpower shortage.
She said in Filipino, “Sir, an audit team is composed of the audit team leader who only has one audit team member. Aside from Bulacan 1st DEO [district engineering office], in which case from 2022 had 120 to 140 flood control projects, the same projects doubled in number in 2023 to 2024. I’m only talking of flood control projects.”
She said that the COA budget for 2023 did not include the hiring of more than 100 regular positions, which should have been assigned to auditing agencies.
“That’s why the distribution for every audit team which have loads of works, will be only two auditors,” she said.
She said COA has also limited the assignment of officials per province, including Central Luzon which she said is covered only by 16 technical specialists.
“Bulacan is only covered by one or two auditors that’s why they were not able to inspect all the projects,” she said.
