The Commission on Audit has called the attention of the Department of Transportation’s Office for Transportation Security or OTS for a P101.3-million overspending.
Meanwhile, the commission has upheld the notice of charge of P381.47 million against the importation in 1996 of 33,575 metric tons of washed sugar that was supposedly misclassified as raw sugar and granted tariff-free privileges by the Bureau of Customs.
COA Chairman Michael Aguinaldo and Commissioners Jose Fabia and Roland Pondoc unanimously ruled to deny for lack of merit the petition for review filed by Salvador Porras Jr., Customs operations officer V of BoC-Port of Iloilo in Iloilo City.
In a 2018 audit report, state auditors said OTS spent P101.3 million on payments for personnel services and maintenance and operating expenses beyond its 2018 budget.
OTS, however, said the Department of Budget and Management only gave OTS a budgetary support based on filled positions despite its repeated request for a budget allocation to cover the operational requirements of vacant plantilla positions.
It denied being remiss in its duty to seek additional funds for the salaries of the security screening officers even if it had already submitted to the Budget department the appropriate dossiers for approval.
“Relying on the assurance from the latter that their requests are being processed, they opted to disburse the salaries of security screening officers and other operational requirements pending the release of approval, only to be notified on the last working day of the year that the requests were disapproved, the report says.
The P101.3 million worth of funds went to request for the repair and maintenance of security screening equipment at P22 million and wages for job order employees at P59.2 million.
The request was disapproved on Dec. 28, 2018.
One of the expenditures were the P3-million budget for salaries and wages of technical assistants and other operational requirements under MOOE approved by the Budget department on Dec. 28, 2018.
State auditors, however, said the budget was erroneously released by the department for personnel services budget.
The other expenditures were eaten up for additional wages of P6.8 million, and P24,550 allocation for terminal leave benefits for resigned employees, also erroneously released by the department.
Last May, OTS wrote COA, saying it spent for the salaries of 938 job order personnel nationwide and the maintenance of security screening equipment in airports pursuant to the civil aviation safeguard requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization audit.