By Ben Rosario
The Commission on Audit chided provincial officials of Surigao del Sur for spending P39 million for a building that has turned to be a white elephant.
Commission on Audit
(MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
In the recently-released 2017 annual audit report for the provincial government, COA said the Corn Post Harvest Processing Trade Center building and facilities had been completed but remained “unused, idled and not maintained.”
State auditors said this project has turned to be a “waste of government resources” since its purpose to help increase the productivity of the farmers was not achieved.
Built in 2009 through the National Agribusiness Corporation, the CPHPTC was financed through a P39.7 million loan from the Land Bank of the Philippines.
It was supposed to benefit farmers by increasing their productivity while lowering production cost, thus, resulting to increased profit.
“It will contribute to the economic development of the whole province,” COA said.
Auditors said the provincial government must put on top of its priority to do list this year,, the utilization of the building and allocation of budget to restore and recondition the facilities inside the structure.
However, the provincial government explained that it has not used the facility because there remained no turnover from NABCOR since this agency has ceased to exist.
IN the same audit report, COA lamented that only P5.06 million of he total P54,217,316 allocated for implementation of programs under the Special Education Fund has been spent for 2017.
Inadequate action of the Local School Board and ineffective and inefficient utilization of local government “resulted to poor delivery of services to local schools as only 9.33 percent of the total budget was actually spent.
“Spending less than a specified or allocated amount entails that the management did not give so much priority to the programs and projects not maximizing the available resources for the benefit of all school learners in Agusan del Sur,” said COA.
Auditors called on provincial officials to initiate speedy procurement and implementation of the proposed projects’ and refocus the attention of the Local School Board on the performance of the SEF in achieving its very purpose.”