Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte on Wednesday said “major inefficiencies and blatant discrepancies in payroll documents” caused the delay in disbursement of allowances to the city’s public school teachers.
“I called a meeting early [Monday] morning with representatives of the following offices: local school board secretariat, Communications Coordination Centre, office of [education committee chairperson] Councilor Aly Medalla, and the city accounting department to get at the root cause of the teachers’ delayed allowances,” she said.
Belmonte noted the errors and inconsistencies in payroll documents submitted by the schools’ division office to the city accounting department, which involved incorrect account numbers, misspelled names, and outdated civil status, among others. Rio N. Araja
“An automated system detects inaccuracies, and when there are inaccuracies, documents need to be returned to the SDO for correction,” she said.
She cited one instance when, on Feb. 1, payroll documents of teachers from District 6 were audited and returned for corrections to the SDO.
After being sent back and forth because of further corrections, the final payroll documents were received at the Fiscal Control Unit on July 6, inadvertently causing delays in disbursement.
“As long as payroll documents are complete and accurate, allowances can be regularly released,” she said.
“It is therefore incumbent upon the SDO to take immediate action in addressing the issues in its preparation and processing of payroll documents and to craft new guidelines that will reduce the processing steps,” Belmonte said.
The issues were brought up during a teachers’ rally held last week by Quezon City Public School Teachers Association president Mabel Caboboy and her officers.
“[It] makes one wonder why the teachers did not seem informed and why the rally pushed through,” Belmonte said.