No misuse, loss of funds in school equipment purchase: Mayor Sara

DAVAO CITY--Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio on Tuesday brushed aside speculations of funds misuse in the procurement of equipment for public elementary and high schools here.

In a press statement issued Tuesday, Mayor Sara said the city government has already complied with the Commission on Audit (COA) report pointing to the lacking documents supporting the procurement of equipment for public schools.

Duterte-Carpio issued the statement following reports that the Commission on Audit (COA) has called the attention of the city on the procurement of the equipment.

“The required document, information and/or comments or explanation were submitted on time to the COA and all these matters were duly rectified and resolved,” the mayor said.

She said the transactions or procurement were the subjects of the COA Resident Auditor’s Audit Observation Memorandum (AOM) issued prior to the conduct of the required Annual Exit Conference for the year 2017.

“It is noteworthy that there were no misuse or loss of public funds. As can be observed, no notice of suspension or disallowance was issued in relation to these COA AOMs because we put high value on transparency,” she said

“Missteps, especially on erroneous or missing documents are immediately corrected to avoid doubt on the transactions. We are happy with the COA report because it helps us improve our system in transaction,” Duterte-Carpio added.

In a statement, COA puts the blame on the Local School Board (LSB) since the documents it submitted did not specify the names of the beneficiary schools.

COA said the Department of Education (DepEd) Schools Division Superintendent had claimed that in order to facilitate and expedite the procurement of the school equipment, the acknowledgement receipt was initially issued by the supply officer. (Funny Pearl Gajunera/PNA)