No financial assistance for barangays – Margot

Pending compliance to the directive issued by the Commission on Audit in Central Visayas (COA-7) to return the aid given by outgoing Mayor Michael Rama last December 2015, Cebu City’s 80 barangays will not receive any financial assistance from the city government this year.

Acting Cebu City Mayor Margarita Osmeña said that she has not included an appropriation for financial assistance to the barangays in the P6-billion 2016 annual budget proposal that the executive department will submit to the City Council this Monday.

“We took it out because of the disallowance. They cannot get it anyway,” Osmeña said.

Cymbeline Celia Chiong-Uy, COA’s supervising auditor in Cebu City, issued the “notice of disallowance” (ND), of the P800-million barangay aid, on Feb. 11, 2016, which was addressed to Rama, former city accountant Mark Rossel Salomon, former city treasurer Diwa Cuevas, city budget officer Marietta Gumia and the barangays that received the aid.

Osmeña said for this reason alone, they already took out the P330-million barangay aid proposed by Rama in the 2016 annual budget.

She said that unless the barangays return what was given to them that was the subject of the disallowance, then they cannot get aid from the city.

She said that the reason the city gives aid to the barangays is for them to have funds for their small projects.

However, she said, before they asked for P6.6 million, and, now, it’s already P10 million.

Osmeña said that the barangays can still get funds for their projects from the city government but they should at least present their project proposal to the city government approved by the barangay’s development council so that it would be transparent.

She said the funds for approved projects will be taken from the Local Development Fund and not from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) because President-elect Rodrigo Duterte had ordered that Pagcor funds be used only on health and education programs.

“It would be a budget that reflects the needs of all stakeholders and not only the barangay council. Include senior citizens, PWDs, the youth, whatever in the barangay itself,” she said.