LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The municipal council committee on ways and means will be conducting an inquiry, in aid of legislation, on the reported P6.8 million unremitted funds to the coffers of the local government.
Councilor Nestor T. Fongwan, Jr., chairman of the said committee, stated that the proposed inquiry which will be scheduled, will not focus on personalities but on the possible legislations that will be adopted to ensure that similar incidents will not be repeated in the future.
Earlier, a committee was created by Mayor Romeo K. Salda pursuant to Administrative Order (AO) No. 56, series of 2019 purposely to conduct an inventory of properties for which some municipal officials and employees were said to be accountable and to determine the responsibility for any shortage of remitted funds if there will be any.
The said committee came out with a report that showed the cash accountability of the concerned municipal officials amounting to P5.4 million.
The local government already sent appropriate demand letters to the family of the concerned municipal officials and employees for them to settle the said obligation while the approval of the Commission on Audit (COA) on the matter is being awaited.
Further, it was also recommended that the concerned municipal officials and employees make arrangement with the local government for the possible settlement of the same within a prescribed period of more or less 5 days.
However, Vice Mayor Roderick Awingan disclosed that the municipal council already authorized Mayor Salda as the head of the local government to file the appropriate charges before the local court against the identified responsible individuals for such unremitted funds that were reportedly collected from the public market.
Subsequently, he claimed that said charges are now pending with the local court, thus, there is no more need to deal with the merits of the case as it may constitute subjudice.
For his part, Mayor Salda stipulated that the local government has already acted on the said matter and the result was the filing of the appropriate charges against the concerned municipal officials and employees and it is now up to them to defend themselves in the court where the said case is now being litigated.
The mayor questioned the intention of the aforesaid inquiry when the matter had already been thoroughly discussed in a number of meetings to thresh out the problem that transpired and for the laying out of safety measures in the concerned offices of the local government to avoid the same incident from being repeated in the future, especially that the involved funds are the taxes of the people which must be protected at all times.
While he welcomed the conduct of the inquiry by the municipal council, he emphasized that the same must dwell on the recommendations on how to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future and to ensure that the collections of the local government are well protected from unnecessary interventions that might cause shortage in the collections that could cast doubts on the credibility of the municipal officials and employees handling the money of the taxpayers.