The Commission on Audit (COA) has advised the National Housing Authority (NHA) to screen strictly Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) members who apply in the Government Employees Housing Program (GEHP) intended for low-salaried personnel.

NHA's laxity, COA said, led to the award of housing units to unqualified high-salaried employees and even to overseas Filipino workers.

In its peformance audit report released last Nov. 22, COA told NHA that “certain mechanisms need to be revisited because some are deficient and result in ineffective implementation of its programs and operations.”

COA said that "in selecting beneficiaries, NHA has been lenient in evaluating applicants against eligibility criteria and submission of documentary requirements.”

“Some applicants failed to meet eligibility criteria, and some submitted incomplete documents and/or application forms with incomplete data yet were still awarded housing units,” it pointed out. 

“For AFP/PNP Housing/GEHP, the income level in determining the beneficiaries’ eligibility was not defined and considered,” it stressed. 

The deficiencies led NHA "in awarding units to high-salaried government employees and even OFWs (overseas Filipino workers).”

“This defeats the program’s purpose of providing housing units to low-salaried members,” COA lamented.

At the same time, COA said in its report that “NHA has no monitoring and does not strictly impose the sanctions embodied in NHA MC (memorandum circular) Nos. 2374 and 2506, resulting in beneficiaries’ continued occupancy of the housing units without fear of being sanctioned for violating the policies and procedures of NHA.”

Thus, it said, “the percentage of timely implementation of the [construction] projects was low.”

“With the opportunities for improvement identified in this audit, NHA needs to hasten strategies to improve its achievement of performance targets in line with the goals and objectives of housing programs,” COA recommended.