Audit bares shortcomings in Haiyan disaster fund handling

Manila: A Commission on Audit (COA) report on the government’s handling of funds and donations for victims of typhoon Haiyan revealed shortcomings that left much of the donations unutilised and going to waste.

COA in a report released September on the Typhoon Haiyan relief operations, stated a large part of the millions of pesos that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) had received from November 2013 to December 2014 had been unutilised.

From November 2013 to December 2014, the DSWD received a total P1.151 billion (Dh118 million) contributions from local and foreign donors.

“The government and relief organisations need money before they can operate and effectively respond to those in need … While the law has amply provided for much-needed resources, we view it with concern that calamity funds remain unutilised both at the level of selected national and local government units,” COA said in its report.

Haiyan, referred to in the Philippines as typhoon “Yolanda”, devastated large areas of the Eastern Visayas region as well as Western Visayas and parts of Palawan and southern Luzon when it arrived in the country during the first week of November 2013.

The super typhoon’s 230 kilometre per hour winds caused storm surges and the typhoon left dead some 6,300 people, and totally or partly damaged the houses of many as three million Filipinos

The COA said the DSWD and other government agencies involved in relief cannot properly account for the entrusted funds.

“Lapses were noted in the documentation and recording of donated cash/relief goods and movement of supplies from warehouses were sometimes done without accompanying approved supporting documents,” COA said.

Likewise, the COA report pointed out that the DSWD lapses in the procurement and acceptance of relief goods resulted in failure to distribute and the expiration of relief goods amounting to at least P141 million.

The DSWD said that it has already clarified the issue, particularly on the P141 million-worth of relief goods stocked in its warehouses.

DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman said that the goods being referred to were those pre-positioned at the National Resource Operations Centre in Pasay City, which were intended to replenish family food packs for families affected by the eruption of Mayon Volcano in 2014.

“Thus, the goods were not wasted and did not expire at all because these were distributed before the expiration date,” Soliman added.