Unaware?

May 25,2016 - 09:07 PM

o052616renelevraFor someone who prides himself as being a capable manager and human resources expert, outgoing Cebu City mayor Michael Rama appears to be too trusting and lax when it comes to dealing with the city’s finances.

In a press conference he called last Monday in which he was supposed to clear the air about allegations of financial mismanagement, Rama said the city finances were centralized to the City Treasurer’s Office. By this he meant that he entrusted everything to Cuevas, claiming that even he doesn’t know everything about the city’s funds.

“As far as I am concerned, never was I told that the city’s finances were in disarray,” the outgoing mayor told reporters. As the city’s top local executive, we find it hard to believe that he knows nothing about how the money is being spent nor how it is being sourced.

For his ignorance, feigned or otherwise, Rama was unable to present adequate evidence to refute the assertion of acting Cebu City Mayor Margot Osmeña that the city would have been bankrupt were it not for the P8.4-billion down payment for the South Road Properties (SRP) lots sold last year.

Unlike in previous meetings with media leaders in which he would tap department heads to explain the issues befalling the city, there was no City Treasurer Diwa Cuevas nor City Attorney Jerone Castillo to support Rama’s contention.

The two presumably outgoing officials were members of the Local Finance Committee and only Cuevas was vocal enough to say that they have nothing to hide. Osmeña herself said she needs to see the city’s bank balance to determine if the city’s financial records are in order.

But this early the assessment looks grim for Cebu City’s finances and by virtue of his suspension, the outgoing mayor simply cannot command loyalty from Cuevas to produce the evidence that would refute these allegations.

Even without the bank balance, there have been serious questions about the city’s financial status and how the city’s finance officials have managed the city’s funds.

Let’s take the city’s garbage disposal problem for one. More than P100 million had been set aside as payment for the tipping fees of the city’s garbage at a private landfill in Consolacion town for 2015 and yet the city managed to deplete the whole amount in less than six months.

While the city allocated P30 million for burial aid and kept on replenishing the amount in supplemental budgets—a campaign practice adopted most likely from Rama’s favored candidate, outgoing Vice President Jejomar Binay—there were hardly enough funds to allocate for relocation of displaced families.

Would Cuevas, even with the authority supposedly entrusted to her by Rama, decide on her own to move for the appropriation of certain items like burial aid in the budget? We think not and she knows that very well.

Rama’s failure to refute the charges adequately makes us shudder about what the city’s actual financial status is when more details of the city’s financial status come in.

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TAGS: Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama, South Road Properties

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