Philippines
National
Solon on PCOO's denial it spent gov't funds for troll army: 'Unbelievable!'
Solon on PCOO's denial it spent gov't funds for troll army: 'Unbelievable!'
“Unbelievable!”
Bayan Muna Rep. Ferdinand Gaite gave this reaction to the denial of the Presidential Communications Operations Office that none of the 375 contractual employees it hired last year was assigned to a troll farm.
PCOO Undersecretary Kris Ablan aired the denial after the Commission on Audit chided the agency for hiring contract of service (COS) personnel that tripled the number of existing personnel the PCOO had last year. Government spent P70.6 million for this.
State auditors also questioned the accomplishment reports of the COS employees which “were not reflective of their actual duties/tasks” as they contain general statements and that the same accomplishments were repetitions of previous months’ reports.
Ablan claimed in a television interview that those hired were given “highly technical tasks” and that they were “social media specialists”, not trolls.
”This is a double whammy — pinalawak na nga ang kontraktwalisasyon sa public sector, pinalawak pa ang troll farms (they not only expanded contractualization in public sector, they even widened troll farms),” said Gaite.
He said that PCOO’s claim that the hired social media specialists referred to graphic artists for their social media account is unworthy of belief because the agency’s FB page is nearly empty of infographics.
“In my opinion, it would not need dozens of so-called specialists to accomplish this task," Gaite said.
Ablan’s failure to respond to the COA findings that accomplishment reports of the hired employees were nearly similar on each month is clearly suspicious, noted Gaite.
“We need to know the truth, as this is not the first time that the Duterte administration has been flagged for unscrupulous online operations, ranging from inauthentic online behavior in Facebook to cyberattacks against independent media and human rights organizations,” he stressed.
The Bayan Muna lawmaker added: “There is indeed basis to suspect that the President's communications team is also involved in such activities, as they have already been caught red-handed several times.” Ablan explained that the COS personnel were hired to carry out tasks for various projects that included the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) Project.
However, COA had also observed in the audit report that the PCOO was unable to hire personnel for the monitoring division of the PCOO PhilSys Project team.