SAN NICOLAS, Ilocos Norte—Mayor Alfredo Valdez is bent on filing charges against the town treasurer here and three other collectors after they were found to have failed to remit at least P6,393,127 in collections for a seven-month period beginning December last year. “They have betrayed our trust. We will file charges against them,” he said. Valdez showed a copy of the Commission on Audit report which recommended the filing of charges against municipal treasurer Evelyn Badua and collecting officers Maria Concepcion Manuel, Carmelita Marcos, Jerome Zabala. The commission also ordered the officials to refund the amount. Valdez said a fact-finding committee he created will come out with a separate report on the cash shortfall. He said the committee was created because of reports that the amount of funds missing could be bigger and more people could be involved in the fund shortfall. “We suspected that there was more to uncover. This has been going on for years. There’s a mafia inside (the treasurer’s office), he said. State auditor Ignacia Medrano, the audit team leader, conducted the investigation from July 3 to 31 this year covering accounts beginning December last year to July this year. Medrano noted in her report, copy of which was obtained by The Ilocos Time, that the cash accountabilities of the employees were not final because payments of big establishments operating in the town have not been reconciled. Medrano said it is provincial treasurer Josephine Calajate who should file administrative charges against Badua. Aside from administrative charges, the government employees are also liable to face criminal charges to be filed by COA. Based on the commission’s findings, the cash accountabilities of the town employees consisted of the following: Badua (P3,574,333), Marcos (P1,868,383), Manuel (P858,814) and Zabala (P91,595). Out of the cash shortage, the employees have so far returned some P585,115. They have since been detailed at the provincial treasurer’s office for a month after COA began its investigation. The COA report showed that the amounts involved “were not turned over to the liquidating officer and remained in the hands of the collectors or spent by them for their personal needs.” The commission noted that every collector had an access to a record book and they could have written the dates of remittance even without the corresponding actual remittance. “Most of the receipts issued (by collectors) were not dated to conceal the actual dates of collection bringing confusion as to the veracity of actual collections,” the report said. The commission also noted deceit in the employees’ practice of canceling the original copy of a receipt without canceling the duplicate and triplicate copies and the issuance of receipts without using carbon papers. “They write only on the original copy what is actually received and write a lesser amount (on the duplicate/triplicate copies) and pocket the difference,” it added. The commission advised the acting town treasurer to closely supervise collecting officers and clerks and require them to submit their collection to the liquidating officer daily before the close of business hours. It also advised the treasurer to deposit all collections with the authorized depository bank. Medrano also told all municipal treasurers in the province to deposit all their collections at the end of the day. Cristina Arzadon, with a report from Dominic B. dela Cruz
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