PLLO: No order from COA to refund expenses for consultancy services

The Presidential Legislative Liaison Office (PLLO) on Tuesday defended the hiring of consultants whose functions the Commission on Audit (COA) said overlapped with duties already being performed by regular employees of the agency.

According to the 2017 COA report, the Palace agency spent a total of P4.095 million for consultancy services, but P3.070 million was spent on nine consultants who could "be dispensed with" as their duties overlapped with regular employees.

Among the tasks given to the consultants were to perform as liaison and public relations officers, review speeches of the PLLO chief, manage databases, serve as executive assistants, and support the federalism campaign of the administration, among others.

The PLLO, however, said the "engagement of professionals and human resource of varied capacities and skills sets dedicated to specialized policy studies and technical assistance work, where trust and confidence are of the utmost consideration as well, was deemed necessary."

"It is also noteworthy that the increased number of coordinative activities entailed the proportional increase in the volume of paper work and administrative duties," the PLLO said in a statement.

"Given this backdrop, the PLLO was constrained to hire additional manpower with qualifications commensurate to their respective tasks to supplement the human resource requirement of the PLLO on endeavours beyond the optimum in-house capacity of its existing staff – from legal professionals to members of the academe and to skilled personnel, all with proven capacities in public administration, local government, administrative law, media relations and good governance."

The PLLO added it had already complied with "all" of COA's recommendations such as giving "clear and defined terms of engagement and deliverables" of its consultants, as well as reviewing its rates of consultancy services "to make it commensurate to the character and quality of the services to be rendered."

"This compliance has been acknowledged by COA in its 2017 AAR [Annual Audit Report] and no disallowance was issued by COA on the matter," the agency said.

The PLLO is currently headed by Secretary Adelino Sitoy, a former mayor of Cordova town in Cebu. — Virgil Lopez/RSJ, GMA News