Audit on ‘missing’ P761-M veterans’ pension: PVAO, bank files don’t match
Saturday, 08 27, 2005
The Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) has a lot of explaining to do, and it has to explain this well.
This when the Commission on Audit (CoA) found in its annual auditing that PVAO failed to reconcile its accounts between its subsidiary ledger (SL) and cash balance declared in its bank statement as of Dec. 31, 2004.
The PVAO, according to the state auditors, failed to reconcile the P761.45-million discrepancy between the SL and the bank statement, noting that the agency's cash in bank had a balance of P1.54 billion —both local currency and current accounts.
The cash in bank is reportedly 85 percent of the total assets of PVAO.
But based on the agency's SL, the PVAO has in its accounts a total of P779.31 million.
The SL, by CoA's definition, is the “book of final entry
containing the details or breakdown of the balance of the controlling account,” hence the law requires that it should be reconciled with the general ledger “regularly or at the end of each month.”
Also in the report prepared by CoA team led by Director Lourdes Castillo, it listed several cash-handling anomalies despite the implementation of the bank remittance scheme for pensioners.
The copy of the report was furnished with retired Cmdr. Rogelio Dayan, PVAO administrator.
Under the new system, pension checks for the veterans are remitted to certain banks instead of the old method of sending them directly to the individual beneficiaries.