IF you ever end up in jail, make sure it is in Palawan where inmates are fed more than the average Filipino, according to the Commission on Audit.
State auditors flagged the provincial government of Palawan for spending P41.08 million on food supplies of its jail inmates in 2019 — exceeding its P27.54 million budget allocation by a whopping 49 percent or P13.54 million.
Seeking clarification, auditors said the acting provincial budget officer disclosed that the overspending resulted from “direct augmentations” of the food budget by lump sum funds.
The audit team said these were done without the approval of the provincial board or the Sangguniang Panlalawigan as required by the Supreme Court ruling in the 2008 case of Hon. Quisumbing et. al vs. Hon. Garcia.
“Thus, the practice of directly augmenting the expenditures from different programs … without prior specific local authority or approval violated the afore-quoted ruling of the SC,” it noted.
Out of the P41.08 million, more than half or P22.25 million did not undergo any public bidding as transactions for various food supplies totaling P16.5 million were paid through cash advance of special disbursing officers while P5.75 million in rice procurement went through an agency-to-agency deal with the National Food Authority (NFA).
“The failure to conduct public bidding adversely affected the declared policy of the State on transparency, competitiveness, and economy in the government procurement. The procurements are neither surprise nor abrupt that the timeline for public bidding cannot be ascertained,” the COA pointed out.
During the year, the province purchased rice worth P5,749,599.80 to feed detainees. In terms of volume, the cost translates to 5,347 sacks.
From January to December 2019, jail population averaged at 883 detainees with the high end of 1,130 posted in January and a low of 605 as of December last year.
By the government bean-counters’ computation, each inmate was allocated 830 grams of rice per day or more than double the 384 grams “normal consumption per pay per person.”
“…(I)t could be inferred that either the detainees were going obese or there was mismanagement of rice supplies for detainees, the former being an illogical conclusion,” the COA said.
