COA wants NSO-7 to recover wages paid to workers of project contractor

The Commission on Audit has requested the National Statistics Office-7 to recover payment of over P600,000 in wages of contractual employees, and close to P200,000 for electricity expenses of the contractor of NSO-Civil Registry System project.

The COA, in its 2005 audit report on the project, noted that NSO-7 paid P687,505.95 in wages of workers that the contractor, Unisys Australia Ltd., had assigned in Cebu to work on the project.

The NSO-7 also paid P199,817.10 for electricity expenses that the contractor had incurred while carrying out the project here, said COA.

These payments should not have been made, said COA, because the contract between NSO and Unisys stipulated for a build-operate-transfer scheme, which means that the project should be at no cost to the government.

COA then recommended that NSO-7 should demand for reimbursement of those payments from Unisys.

There was no reason stated however in the COA report on why NSO-7 made those payments but NSO regional director Lilia Tandoc agreed with the state auditors' findings because the project is a 12-year contract, since 1999, and Unisys should shoulder these dues through this period.

Tandoc said there has been no action yet from the NSO central office on the matter.

The NSO-CRS project involves the computerization of the civil registry system around the country that would provide clients with a "request-anywhere" capability.

Phase I of the project covered the establishments of Census Serbilis Centers in Metro Manila, starting in Pasay City, on January 2002. In the succeeding years, Unisys worked for the rollout of similar centers in 14 regions of the country.

Under the system, all civil registry documents will be digitized and put on a database that every Serbilis Center anywhere in the country would be able to access at a faster rate than before. - Ferliza C. Contratista