City Hall’s P56.84M in wages, financial aid ‘doubtful’

By: Gerome Dalipe

STATE auditors doubted the validity of the wages and financial aid released to the Iloilo City Hall employees amounting to P56.84 million in 2018.

That’s because these disbursements were not certified by the City Accounting Office as to their completeness and propriety of supporting documents or existence of funds, the auditors said.

“Thus, sufficiency of relevant supporting documents to establish validity of the payments made was not ensured,” read the Commission on Audit (COA) report.

The government auditing manual provides that disbursements of funds require certification and approval of vouchers and payrolls as to validity, propriety and legality of the claim.

Likewise, the manual provides that the disbursement process in the processing of payrolls for payment of salaries and wages out of cash advances also requires the certification of the city accountant.

This aims at determining the propriety of supporting documents or availability of funds.

But a report of disbursements on the liquidation of cash advances from Jan. 1 to Oct., 16, 2018 showed that 471 payrolls totaling to P56,843,890.53 were not certified by the City Accountant as to completeness and propriety of supporting documents.

The funds were granted to four regular disbursing officers as payment for salaries, wages, bonus, honoraria, various allowances, financial assistance, cash prizes, pension of senior citizens and other cash payments made thru their payrolls.

“Failure of the accountant to check and certify the completeness and propriety of supporting documents on cash disbursements may expose government funds to risk of erroneous, irregular and illegal disbursements,” read the COA report.

The auditors asked the city accountant to certify the completeness and propriety of supporting documents of disbursements covered by payrolls paid through cash advances of disbursing officers.

This to ensure the correctness and validity of payments made by the City Government, the auditors said.