BONTOC, Mountain Province – An anti-graft and corruption advocate in the province wants President Rodrigo R. Duterte to conduct an investigation on the alleged excessive overtime services of several offices in the provincial government from January 1, 2012, to the end of December 2015.
In his letter to the President, Salvador Liked claimed it is his belief that the various government officials and employees had allegedly corrupted their offices through anomalous overtime pays because cases were reportedly filed against the erring public officials, thus, they have their no fear to do similar offenses in the succeeding years.
He alleged that maybe during the President’s term, the erring officials and employees will stop their alleged malpractices but after his term, they will again be back with a vengeance, thus, the need for graft and corruption in the government to stop so that the trust and confidence of the people on the government will return.
In an Audit Observation Memorandum (AOM) No. 100-2012-08 dated January 23, 2012, Mary T. Falag-ey, Audit Team Leader, and Dibangkipun I. Ayoong, Supervising Auditor, observed that the provincial government did not exercise prudent expenditure management when it allowed overtime expenditures amounting to P2,748,016 in eight offices from January 1 to December 31, 2011, without first determining the specific activities if such overtime was necessary resulting to the unreasonable amount claimed for overtime services.
Under Budget Circular No. 10 dated March 29, 1996, overtime work should be avoided by adequate planning of work activities and it should not be resorted to in the performance of regular routine work and activities, except in cases when unforeseen events and emergency situations will result in financial loss to the government and other instrumentalities, embarrass the government due to its liability to meet its commitment, negate the purposes for which the work or activity was conceived.
In addition, the audit team cited 4.6 of the Commission on Audit (COA) Circular No. 85-55-A provide that the overtime service covers only three hours or less, continuous work is allowed without breaktime, but if it exceeds 3 hours, a breaktime for 1 hour shall be maintained.
The eight offices that claimed the alleged excessive overtime services include accounting, assessor, budget, engineering, general services, internal audit, planning and the treasury offices.
The audit team pointed out the authority to render overtime while the specific period was stated for most offices within which such services was to perform did not specify the situations to which the rendering of overtime services is necessary for the assurance that the work or activities to be performed was not routinary for the concerned offices.
It was noted that no individual accomplishment report was submitted by the employees who rendered overtime services and what was attached was an accomplishment report signed by the head of office which served as their accomplishment as an office.
The audit team disclosed the number of hours rendered for overtime services exceeded 3 hours daily from Monday to Sunday and from the daily time records submitted to support claim for overtime services, the time of entry during week days was from 6 pm to 9 pm for the engineering and planning offices and 6 pm to 10 pm to as late as 12 midnight for the other six offices. By HENT