Margot O: Where did Cebu city education funds go?

“WHERE is Cebu City Hall’s Special Education Fund?”

Councilor Margarita “Margot” Osmeña posed this question in her privilege speech in yesterday’s City Council session.

Osmeña, who heads the budget and finance committee, said based on the May 21 Daily Cash Report of the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO), there’s only P174.3 million in the SEF.

Of that amount, P165.3 million were placed under a time deposit account which will mature on December this year.

This means the city government can use only P8.9 million in funds.

“How can we implement the programs, projects, etc. for the Local School Board (LSB) when we have only around P9 million in expendable funds for SEF?” Osmeña said.

Insufficient

The city government appropriated P385 million for the SEF which comes from one percent of the city’s total real property tax collections.

LSB head Raddy Diola earlier said the amount is broken down into P149.5 million for maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE), P53.9 million for capital outlay, P33 million for personnel services, P68.4 million for elementary schools and P80 million for high schools.

Almost half of the MOOE, or P70 million is set aside for the utility bills of most public elementary and high schools.

Diola said if the schools can reduce their expenses, the amount could be used to build more classrooms.

Despite the appropriation, Osmeña said the city’s actual available funds are insufficient.

Transfer

“It must also be noted that the P165 million in time deposit was deposited sometime in late 2010 and early 2011 by former city treasurer Ofelia Oliva under the General Fund-Proper. This was subsequently transferred to the SEF only on April 1, 2014 by Acting Treasurer Diwa Cuevas,” Osmeña said.

She said the transfer may be due to an observation by the Commission on Audit (COA) in its 2014 Annual Audit Report which stated that the city didn’t transfer the SEF collected as of December 2013 which violates section 272 of the Local Government Code.

After her speech, the council passed Osmeña’s resolutions requesting the LSB to submit a report on its 2013, 2014 and 2015 disbursements.

They also want the city treasurer to explain and submit a report on the receipts and disbursements of the SEF for 2013, 2014 and 2015 and to determine how much was collected by the city for SEF so far for this year.

Sought for comment on the matter, Diola said the LSB’s priority is really on building more infrastructure for the city’s public schools especially classrooms.

Programmed

“The P9 million is not true. In fact, we have set aside this year P50 million specifically for senior high school (either construct classrooms or purchase equipment). So that’s on top of the time deposit that will end (by December). That’s under SEF. I don’t know where her figure comes from,” he said.

Diola said what was certified as their budget this year is really P385 million which was why they programmed the amount.

He said the amount that was placed in a time deposit will be allocated by the LSB for construction of 150 additional classrooms.

This is on top of a P300 million budget under the Basic Education Facilities Fund (BEFF) of the Department of Education (DepEd) for Cebu City.

The amount is equivalent to 230 more classrooms and is about to be bidded out.

He said even without the senior high school students, the city has a deficit of 400 classrooms.

Diola said they have an agreement with the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI), which funded the Ermita Elementary School, for them to shoulder the construction of standalone senior high schools in barangay Guba for the north and Bonbon for the south.