Saturday, August 30, 2008 Carvajal: Matching bite with growl By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
MY hometown made headlines the other day, compliments of the Commission on Audit (COA), which reported that Barili failed to implement its P1.5 million realty tax computerization program. Last July 20, 2006, former mayor Jose Antonio Nemeno paid for the program that included both installation of the system and training of the personnel tasked to man it.
COA has recently made public the results of its audit of local governments.
However, through no fault of its own, COA does not have the big bite to go with its lion’s growl. It cannot impose sanctions on erring local executives. Neither can it enforce its own recommendations which, more often than not, are lost in the musty woodwork of an inept bureaucracy.
May I suggest that concerned citizens of audited municipalities provide the bite on COA’s growl? Otherwise, nothing happens to resolve the issues COA brings up in these reports and what is supposed to be a terrifying growl ends harmlessly as a pipsqueak. It is, therefore, as a concerned citizen of Barili that I call on the townspeople to see to it that their officials implement the recommendations of COA on this and future audits. Nobody else will.
I am quite aware that the contract was signed and the purchase of the computerization program was made by the previous administration. But that should not free the present administration of the responsibility of seeing to it that the people of Barili get their money’s worth on the project. Not unless they have a better excuse than lack of trained personnel.
The contract includes training of personnel to man the system. Hence, if there are no qualified personnel it must be due to the municipal officers’ inability to make the supplier, Caentech Inc., abide by the terms of the contract to train said personnel. Why can’t they go after the supplier?
This reminds me of the people’s growl about the sad state of Barili’s drainage system that caused the poblacion’s disastrous flooding not too long ago. Official promises were made then. I wonder what happened to those promises. Is a drainage system in the works? Is there now in place a disaster preparedness program? In any case, Barili folks should follow up on these promises and put some bite on their own growl.
If we want our local officials to perform we must demand that performance.
After all we elected them into office. If they do not listen, chances are they bought their way into office and feel no obligation to the citizenry. The moral of the story, if you want to growl against local officials and put a matching bite to it, do not sell your vote and help prevent vote-buying. We’ve had enough growl. We need a bigger bite to go with it.
