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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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Sunday. September 17, 2017
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ILOILO City – This year’s Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund of the city government is underutilized.
Local officials found out about this during an evaluation of the flooding that occurred in various parts of the metro last week.
The city government has a P31.349-million quick response fund. Only P500,000 of this has been spent as of Sept. 14.
Acting Mayor Jose Espinosa III blamed lack of coordination within the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (CDRRMC), among other reasons.
“May iban nga mga areas nga indi kabalo how to process sang funding nga ara, iban wala kabalo nga may ara sila funding,” Espinosa said.
Unutilized Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund appropriations include:
- P1 million for CDRRM Office
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P1.5 million for CDRRMC committee on response
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P3 million for committee on disaster preparedness (training expenses)
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P1.7 million for committee on disaster preparedness (printing and publication expenses)
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P1 million for committee on prevention and mitigation
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P1 million for committee on prevention and mitigation (printing and publication expenses)
“It is not good that we do not spend our budget,” said Espinosa. “We are supposed to have spent all the appropriations by the end of the year.”
Espinosa said he ordered City Administrator Hernando Galvez and Councilor Julie Grace Baronda, chairwoman of the Sangguniang Panlungsod committee on social services and disaster relief, to hold a special meeting on the disaster management budget.
“Everybody should prepare kag mag-submit sa ila sang ila budget report before kami mag-regular meeting next week,” the acting mayor said, adding that the reports will be consolidated for discussion.
In a national scale, local government units (LGUs) tend to leave their calamity funds unused.
A Commission on Audit (COA) assessment on disaster management practices in 2013 – when super typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) struck central Philippines – showed low utilization rates of disaster funds by LGUs across all regions.
“Despite the inadequate resources of some LGUs due to their small budget, local disaster risk reduction and management funds are usually unutilized or underutilized,” the audit report stated.
The COA traced the tendency not to use disaster preparedness funds to bureaucratic issues.
Moreover, the national government tends to allocate more funds on disaster response, not on preparedness, the COA noted.
“Public spending on disaster management is characterized as largely reactive as shown by the huge balances of calamity funds before the occurrence of a disaster and the corresponding increase in expenditures during disaster response,” the report read.
The COA also observed a lack of transparency on the use of disaster funds.
“An indispensable precondition to improve aid effectiveness is greater transparency and better information dissemination,” it said. “While there is a law that enables the sourcing and utilization of disaster funds, compliance to the said provision is low.” (With a report from GMA News/PN)
ic sa circumferential road sa Brgy. Balabago, Jaro sang tinalikdan nga bulan./H
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