BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan urged the national government to directly download to the concerned local governments the funds earmarked for Bottoms Up Budgeting (BUB) projects to facilitate the immediate implementation of the identified projects and the subsequent liquidation of the same.
The local chief executive made the recommendation after the city’s performance in the implementation of BUB projects dropped after it was not able to implement some projects funded by the Department of Education and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources as well as liquidate some projects which were implemented by concerned departments of the city government.
For those projects which were funded under the DENR and the education department, the city mayor revealed that the concerned agencies never downloaded to the city government the funds for still unknown reasons that is why the city had nothing to implement and subsequently liquidate.
On the other hand, concerned departments which implemented BUB projects that were not able to liquidate such projects were already given the necessary instructions to complete the pertinent documents and submit the same to the agencies that downloaded the funds in order to erase the impression that the funds for the projects were misused.
According to him, it does not mean that when the funds were not liquidated that the same were misused or misappropriated but there might be some lacking documents that were not submitted by the concerned departments thereby rendering the liquidation reports incomplete, thus, notices were given out for such offices to complete their liquidation reports in order to improve the performance of the city in the implementation of BUB projects.
The City Poverty Reduction Action Team (CPRAT) which is composed of various departments from the city government oversees the implementation of BUB projects that were previously identified and subsequently funded by concerned national government agencies from the BUB funds earmarked by the national government to help uplift the living condition of people in the countryside.
Domogan explained by directly downloading the BUB funds to the city government, concerned departments could easily implement and liquidate the projects that were identified so that the performance of the local government will not be affected by the failure of regional government agencies to release funds for reasons known only to them.
He cited the local government should not be held hostage by the inability of concerned regional line agencies to immediately release the BUB funds earmarked for the city because the local government already allocated the required counterpart funds which will be able to facilitate the immediate completion of the projects without delays and that the local government will be the one liable once it was not able to complete the programmed BUB projects within the prescribed timetable.
By Dexter A. See
