COA: DSWD-Region IX records P660-M worth of questionable CCT deals

At least P660 million worth of transactions for the implementation of the Modified Conditional Cash Transfer (MCCT) program for poor households in 2019 were marred by non-liquidation, lack of documentation, violation of the procurement law, among others, a Commission on Audit (COA) report showed.

In its annual audit report on the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), state auditors noted that the MCCT implementation in Region 9 has been defective, if not deficient, because of the lack of pertinent documents supporting P660 million worth of disbursements for the program.

The P660 million questionable transactions per COA include:

• lack of competitive bidding for the procurement of service providers for the implementation of the Skills Training Modality of the MCCT worth P163 million;
• non-liquidation of P93 million worth of disbursements and cash advance to the above mentioned service providers;
• delayed submission of memorandum of agreement involving P163 million;
• unreasonable delay in liquidation of P79 million of cash advances for MCCT skills training;
• incomplete supporting documents on disbursement vouchers and report on cash disbursements for MCCT cash advances worth P141 million; and
• non-submission of disbursement vouchers worth P18 million for implementation of MCCT skills management training

In response, the DSWD said in the same report that it relied on the good faith of the National Project Management Office (NPMO) which allowed the use of Cash Assistance Payroll for the implementation of MCCT's skills training, considering that the procurement process is not feasible and not convenient.

As to the lacking documents, the DSWD attributed it to the practice of partial liquidation where supporting documents attached to previous liquidations were no longer included to the present ones.

The DSWD, however, has argued that it already issued a directive prohibiting partial liquidation and that its accounting unit has been required to attach Journal Entry Vouchers in every liquidation report in compliance with COA recommendations.

COA then said that while the NPMO allowed the use of Cash Assistance Payroll in the implementation of MCCT's skills training, the Sustainable Livelihood Program Field Operations Manual which was referred to by MCCT in the implementation of its skills training provided that for financial transactions between DSWD and partners, services of the latter maybe employed following RA 9184, through competitive bidding, as well as alternative methods of procurement.—LDF, GMA News