At least P70 million of the federal government’s COVID-19 response funds didn’t go to eligible beneficiaries, in accordance with the Commission on Audit (COA).
This is acknowledged beneath COA’s Performance Audit Report on the COVID-19 Adjustment Measures Program (CAMP), a authorities program which supplied monetary assist to affected employees through the pandemic.
State auditors mentioned that the P70.26 million CAMP fund was given to 14,052 beneficiaries of which 6,214 had been “ineligible” whereas the 7,838 had been “probably ineligible beneficiaries” as a result of they already acquired monetary help from different monetary assist packages of the federal government such because the Small Business Wage Subsidy Program by Social Security System (SSS) and Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Social Amelioration Program and their month-to-month gross wage had been above the P40,000 threshold.
“Based on the interview, DOLE (Department of Labor and Employment) only relied on applicants’ self-declaration since there was no available and complete centralized database that would serve as a basis for determining whether an applicant already received financial assistance from other programs,” the COA mentioned.
“In addition, only the DOLE, Department of Finance (DOF), and SSS were able to have a data sharing agreement on their beneficiaries,” the COA added.
State auditors cited that beneath the Implementing Guidelines of Bayanihan 2 Law, the subsidies or advantages acquired from present monetary help packages will likely be considered within the computation of the subsidy or profit to be acquired to forestall double dipping or unauthorized receipt of a number of subsidies.
In addition, the CAMP-Bayanihan 2 pointers issued by the DOLE supplied a listing that enumerates the exclusions from qualifying for this system to forestall the distribution of economic help to ineligible beneficiaries described within the Bayanihan 2 legislation.
COA additionally famous that the comparability of CAMP-Bayanihan 2 (beneficiaries info together with SAP self-declaration) and SBWS knowledge revealed that a complete of 33 beneficiaries acquired monetary help from three authorities packages, and that these 33 beneficiaries had acquired a complete of P566,000 from CAMP-Bayanihan 2 and SBWS program.
COA additionally used the candidates’ self-declaration from CAMP-Bayanihan 2 knowledge to determine whether or not the beneficiary acquired SAP. COA, nevertheless, couldn’t decide if these 33 additionally acquired SAP because of lack of paperwork.
In response to COA’s findings, the DOLE Regional Offices in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and Region 5 defined that the recognized variations had been because of timing subject when the functions had been processed whereby, the checklist of beneficiaries from different monetary help packages had been nonetheless not obtainable.
DOLE workplaces in Regions 5 and seven, for his or her half, argued that in some circumstances, beneficiaries misinterpreted the choices supplied and mistakenly ticked the checked field.
DOLE Region 5 additionally mentioned that upon validation of knowledge, a Demand Letter will likely be issued for the return of the monetary help.
COA additionally mentioned that the comparability of CAMP Bayanihan 2 and SBWS knowledge additionally confirmed that 6,181 acquired CAMP Bayanihan 2 monetary help amounting to P104.61 million, and that 52 of the 6,181 beneficiaries acquired each CAMP-Bayanihan 2 and SBWS assist.
The 52 returned their subsidies/monetary help to Social Security System starting from P5,000-P17,117, totaling P472,153.
“In our analysis and the result of interview, we noted that approval of the ineligible beneficiaries (also recipients of SBWS Program) was due to : a) manual cross matching of FO evaluators on the list of SBWS beneficiaries; b) delayed provision of the list; c) lack of awareness of some DOLE regional and field office evaluators on the list of SBWS Program beneficiaries provided by SSS; and d) voluminous applications received and evaluated,” COA mentioned.
In the identical COA report, DOLE informed state auditors that it’ll maximize efforts to generate a clear checklist of beneficiaries which have been cross-checked with recipients of different monetary help packages to make sure the detection of a number of/duplicate functions earlier than they are going to be processed for approval.—LDF, GMA Integrated News
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
