FORMER President Gloria Arroyo’s program to hire out-of-school-youth may have had a noble intention but its implementation was riddled with irregularities that even the Commission on Audit (COA) cannot say if the beneficiaries received the salary promised them.
In fact, the Audit commission doubted if the street sweepers employed under the Out-of-School Youth Serving Towards Economic Recovery (Oyster) program that had a funding of P1.28 billion were justly paid because the project lacked “structured monitoring mechanism” from the two agencies ordered to implement it—the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Philippine National Police (PNP.)
For six years, the Department of Budget and Management released an aggregate of P1.28 billion to the DPWH’s Central Office, which was forwarded to its own National Capital Region (NCR) Office. In turn, the funds were “transferred to and fully expended” to the PNP.
The commission reported that as of June 30, 2010, the DPWH transferred P471.24 million to the PNP Headquarters Office and P811.041 million to the PNP National Capital Region Police Office since November 2005.
For January to June 2010, P154.308 million should have been used to pay the salaries of the workers, COA said.
However, the commission said there was no way of knowing if those enrolled in the program were properly compensated since there was no report from the PNP.
COntinue Reading at Manila Times
