COA REPORT
The Commission on Audit (COA) has found that several employees and officials, both current and past, still have unliquidated cash advances from previous years.
As part of its Annual Audit Report (AAR) for the city’s financial statements of 2016, COA reported that a total of P42.2 million in cash advances for time-bound undertakings have remained unliquidated.
“The failure to fully liquidate cash advances in accordance with the prescribed rules and regulations resulted in the understatement of affected expense accounts and the overstatement of asset accounts,” COA said.
State auditors also found out that more than half, or 57.9 percent of these unliquidated cash advances have been outstanding for over a year already.
At the same time, COA found out that out of the total amount of unliquidated cash advances, P26.1 million were suspended by the City Accounting Office since the liquidation reports of these accountable officers lacked some documents.
Until now, the requested documents have not been submitted.
Among those with incomplete documents are Councilor James Anthony Cuenco; former city councilors Richard Osmeña, Noel Wenceslao and Gerry Carillo.
Other officers with accountabilities include former city legal officer Jerome Castillo, former city engineer Jose Marie Poblete, former Department of Social Welfare and Services (DSWS) head Ester Concha and her former assistant head Lucia Mahusay, and former protocol officer Leslie Ann Reyes.
Current city engineer Josefa Ylanan and Department of Veterinary Medicine and Fisheries (DVMF) head Alice Utlang were also included in the list.
The biggest recorded unliquidated cash advance was from Mahusay at P6 million. The amount was intended for barangays affected by the El Niño phenomenon in Cebu City last year.
Comments made by Cebu City officials during COA’s earlier exit interviews were also included in the AAR.
It stated that Cebu City officials pointed out that the unliquidated cash advances reported by COA were done between 2011 to 2016.
“It must be noted that a significant portion of said period was under the previous administration. Nonetheless, the City Mayor has instructed the OIC-City Accountant to notify and remind the concerned parties to immediately settle their outstanding cash advances and submit the lacking documents required by the Accounting Office,” read the city’s comment.
Despite this, COA still recommended that the city mayor instruct the concerned parties to immediately settle their unliquidated cash advances pursuant to COA Circular No. 97-002.
If these officers cannot submit their complete documents, COA said they recommend that their salaries or other payments be withheld by the city.
“We further recommend that the Local Chief Executive require the Accounting Office to strengthen their preventive and monitoring control measures to ensure timely communication of deficiencies noted on the submitted settlement of cash advances,” COA added.
Despite the unliquidated cash advances, COA has given Cebu City a “qualified opinion” on its financial statements for 2016.
In previous years, the Cebu City government received “adverse opinions” from COA on the presentation of its financial statements.
Meanwhile, Osmeña said that his first State of the City Address (Soca) last Tuesday was not about attacking the previous administration of former mayor Michael Rama but was just a factual report of the situation of the city.
“Of course, he (Rama) will look at it that way. I am reporting the state of the city and that is the state of the city. That is my job. People want to know what the state is. That is the state. Please don’t take it personally,” he said.