The Commission on Audit (COA) has flagged the officials of Ramos town in Tarlac for "lack of responsiveness to the real needs of residents' when 90 percent of the town's farmlands were inundated and 1,126 families were affected by typhoons "Egay" and "Falcon" in July and August 2023.

In its 2023 audit report, COA scrutinized the municipality's Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (LDRRM) fund utilization.

It said its auditors found that the municipality appropriated P5,326,229 as its LDRRM fund for 2023. However, they noticed that the municipality simply adopted the same programs, projects, and activities (PPAs) from its 2021 LDRRM plan.

For the COA, the findings showed a "lack of responsiveness by the management to the real needs of its constituents."

COA's audit report showed that 15 out of the 20 PPAs were implemented, while five PPAs with a total appropriation of P1,025,654.97 were still not implemented as of Dec. 31, 2023.

These unimplemented PPAs included the purchase of swab testing kits, purchase of Covid-19 vaccines, purchase of subsidized vegetable seeds, climate and disaster risk assessment (CDRA) training, and titling of acquired lots.

"The non-implementation of identified PPAs for the cited reasons may be indication that the planned PPAs were again not responsive to the real needs of the constituents," the report also said.

At the same time, COA said that the auditors found that the municipality stored 21 cavans of rice as part of its rice subsidy program. Unfortunately, these were "already infested with insects and were still in the municipality's stock room," it said.

Another concern raised was the incomplete details submitted in the distribution list for various medicines, dengue solution, palay seeds, and relief goods. While the municipality was able to provide auditors copies of distribution lists, these were found to be incomplete, COA said.

It said: "One common observation was that the submitted distribution lists lacked necessary details such as quantity and type of items received. Also, several pages of the list do not bear the signature of the recipients, their respective addresses, and the date of receipt," the report said. "These deficiencies precluded the audit team from timely verifying the transactions."

COA asked officials of Ramon town to complete all the necessary details in the supporting distribution list in order to help them conduct its validation, as well as design guidelines on distributing farm inputs to farmers for approval in order to prevent excessive disbursements and other future complaints.

Also, it said that concerned town officials should closely monitor perishable goods like rice so as to avoid spoilage.