CEBU, Philippines — The Commission on Audit has found that Cebu City did not submit the Summary/List of Donations Received, Distributed and Balance and its supporting documents, as well as the required one-time report, for cash and in-kind donations.
COA said this is contrary to Commission on Audit Circular No. 2020-009 as it concluded that “cash and in-kind donations may not have been properly accounted for and the transparency of the utilization of the donations was not achieved.”
“In view of the outbreak of the COVID-19, COA issued guidelines for the temporary relaxation of certain provisions in existing guidelines for the receipt, recording, distribution, reporting and direct release of donations in-kind to the beneficiaries during the period of quarantine. The purpose of which is to help ensure that the distribution of donations and relief goods received by the government agencies will not be unnecessarily delayed,” the COA report read.
“Thus, COA issued Circular No. 2020-009 dated April 21, 2020 to provide temporary relaxation in the application of certain provisions of COA Circular No. 2014-002 dated April 15, 2014 and COA Memorandum No. 2014-009 dated August 28, 2014 in areas under quarantine, without necessarily disregarding the basic controls to ensure proper accounting of the donations,” it added.
COA said according to the city’s posts from its website and news articles from leading local media outlets, the city received numerous donations from various donors. Yet the corresponding Summary/List of Donations Received, Distributed, and Balances with its supporting documents, as well as the required one-time report, for cash and in-kind donations were not submitted to the audit team.
Verification from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council and Office of the Civil Defense’s official websites also showed no donations were reported by the City of Cebu under their real-time data on monitored donations.
COA said that a representative from the Department of Social Welfare Services (DSWS) informed that the DSWS personnel were supposedly tasked to handle all the documents and transactions pertaining to cash and in-kind donations of the city, but the documents were not handed over to them by the Office of the Mayor.
As per COA, the Office of the Mayor already received a letter request for the list of donations from the Audit Team on June 24, 2020 but the requested reports were still not submitted to date.
“The non-submission of the required reports inhibits the audit team from validating if the minimum requirements and controls on the receipt, distribution and recording of the donations received were carried off. Also, it hinders the government’s policy of fostering transparency and deprives the constituents of information on the City’s donations,” COA stated.
Response
For its part, the city responded that the Office of the Mayor submitted a Summary/List of Donations Received, relevant acknowledgment receipts and the one-time report for cash donations and in-kind donations to the Audit Team.
“All the donations received by the Office of the Mayor has been properly acknowledged and accounted for and the Office is in close coordination with DSWS and other end-user offices for their respective summary lists of donations for any other donations that were directly coursed through their offices,” read the city’s comment.
COA later confirmed that the list of donations received and the corresponding acknowledgment receipts were forwarded by the Office of the Mayor to the audit team.
However, COA said the lists of recipients and the inventory of the remaining undistributed items, if any, were not yet submitted. — JMD (FREEMAN)