DAVAO City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio is pushing the idea of taking in a third-party auditor to ensure that the city's resources and revenues are being used properly and ploughed back to the people.
The mayor said this as she sought the support of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. to the idea in her keynote message during the 50th Annual Installation of Officers and Board of Trustees of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. (DCCCII) last Friday at SMX Convention Center.
r"Just this morning (January 26, 2018), I suggested that we get a third party business audit for Davao City to make sure that we are using the resources of the city government properly," she said as she stressed the need to address the priority concerns of the city that is fast growing and bringing in problems that need to be addressed just as fast.
While government has the Commission on Audit (COA) to keep track of all its operations and disbursements so as to provide an objective evaluation of the accuracy of the accounting of the resources utilized, a third party audit comes to play to reinforce the credibility of the financial reports, performance appraisals, and compliance in the city's operations and to remove any conflict of interest that may arise between the city government officials and COA officials and expand the reach of the audit even to the farthest and most complex projects.
This is not to cast doubt on how the COA works providing what many refer to as oversight, insight, and foresight.
A third party and independent eye is always useful especially because, as the city mayor pointed out, Davao City is not an ordinary city. It is categorized as a highly-urbanized city, but residents know how vast its rural area and population is as well. It is not just huge in area but huge in population.
To keep an eye on how government resources is being utilized in such a vast and populate local government will definitely require eyes that are not jaded, and it is highly appreciated that the present administration sees the need for this and is not averse to being found to be wanting in its delivery of services.