THE Office of the Civil Defense (OCD) assured the public on Friday, May 31, that donations amounting to almost P37 million are not missing.
The OCD gave the assurance after the Commission on Audit (COA) released a report saying only P10,000 has been released.
“We would like to assure the public that the funds for the victims of the Marawi siege in the amount of P36.91 million from various donors is still with the OCD and are not missing,” OCD executive director Ricardo Jalad said in a statement.
“The reason for the low utilization of the donated funds is that the OCD was instead utilizing its Quick Response Fund (QRF) to ensure expeditious delivery of services to the victims of Marawi,” he added.
Jalad said their QRF funds were used to help Marawi war victims with their funeral needs, transportation, feeding programs in schools, food, non-food items, and family packs, rice augmentation for DSWD field office, procurement of various items for Evacuation Centers (ECs) in Lanao del Norte such as insulators for tents, aggregates for surface hardening and TV sets, reconstruction of school buildings and support to Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM) field office.
He said that as of May 30, a total of P5.164 billion has been released for the implementation of the Marawi Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Program.
Of this amount, P4.8 billion was released in 2018 while P213 million was released this year for different projects, programs and activities (PPAs) such as business and livelihood assistance, housing, land resource management, reconstruction, and health and social services.
Jalad said that as discussed with the TFBM chairman, Secretary Eduardo del Rosario, the P36.91-million donation in the custody of the OCD will form part of the funding source for projects that will be implemented for the rehabilitation and recovery of Marawi City.
“We have initial utilization of said funds not reflected in the COA report which is the 1 million support to TFBM Field Office for their project during the Ramadan holiday on June 5,” he said.
“As of this date, the total funding requirement for this year’s project is in the amount of P10 billion for which the NDRRM funds only has about P8 billion available,” he added.
Jalad assured that the donated funds will be utilized properly.
He, however, said there are several documents required from the beneficiaries which are necessary for the liquidation of the funds to the Commission on Audit.
“In exigent circumstances, OCD had provided the financial assistance to victims of disaster even pending the completion of required documents. The documents being required from the beneficiaries are necessary for the liquidation of the Accountable Officers,” said Jalad. (SunStar Philippines)