Tuesday, July 01, 2008 PNP to pursue dismissed cops who received pays
THE Philippine National Police (PNP) said it is taking legal action against dismissed police personnel who managed to encash paychecks despite having been separated from the service.
PNP Chief Avelino Razon, Jr. said the PNP will send demand letters to the last known addresses of these personnel to recover payments that were inadvertently made in their favor despite their separation from the PNP.
The PNP, through its Finance and Legal Service, is prepared to take legal action to recover the P36.8-million overpayments made to 153 dismissed, 92 resigned, and 20 terminated PNP personnel.
"If these people will not heed our demand to return the overpaid amount, we will file criminal and civil cases against them to recover these government funds," Razon said.
Earlier, the PNP was able to recover P40 million in overpayments from 995 retired, 269 deceased and 59 suspended personnel. Payment for these receivables were deducted from the pension and benefits received by these personnel.
In its 2007 report, the Commission on Audit noted overpayments amounting to P76.8 million made to 1,739 deceased, retired, dismissed, suspended and terminated personnel.
"We have initiated some administrative measures to ensure that the names of retired, deceased and dismissed personnel will be deleted from the payroll automatically upon issuance of their separation orders," Razon said.
PNP spokesman Nicanor Bartolome said the overpayments were traced to the administrative oversight wherein some names of deceased, retired and dismissed personnel were not immediately deleted from the master file.
"Because the names were not deleted on time, either the Computer Service continued to print their paychecks or the Finance Service continued to credit payments to their ATM payroll accounts," Bartolome said.
"The element of good faith does not exist in this case. From all indications, there was fraud and dishonesty committed; and these government funds must be recovered," added Bartolome. (VR/Sunnex)
