Good grief! Noynoy and Dinky’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program which has tens of billions as doleout has been going on for two years, with a lot of anomalies and irregularities found by the official auditing body, the Commission on Audit (CoA), yet there went Malacañang and Noynoy, through his spokesman, Edwin Lacierda, still blaming Gloria Arroyo for these anomalies.
A report stated that Malacañang had admitted that irregularities and other anomalies that hounded the administration’s main poverty alleviation program called the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) can only be blamed on former President Gloria Arroyo.
Lacierda even lied with a straight face, claiming that the irregularities in the CoA report covered the years of Gloria, even when it was clear that the CoA report covered the year 2011, which falls under Noynoy’s term.
But Lacierda even had the gumption to state that the irregularities in the CCT have been already corrected even as he insisted that the anomalous practices dated back from the time of the previous administration.
Lacierda claimed the “latest” CoA review of the CCT program covered 2007 up to 2009.
It boggles the mind that Noynoy, to this day, and even faced with proof positive of anomalies being committed in his administration programs, refuses to take responsibility and refuses too, to make his officials and himself accountable for such anomalies.
He probably thinks that by simply mouthing his mantra of daang matuwid, he and his officials — especially those belonging to his inner clique, the people will accept his word as gospel truth so much so that all he needs to say, to explain the anomalies is that all these Gloria is to blame.
Noynoy no longer lives in the real world. He is such a failure that he needs to lay all blame on Gloria and her administration. But people are no longer buying his blame Gloria game.
People know that he and his programs are abject failures, and a lot of taxpayers’ money is being wasted — especially in the tens of billions being held by Dinky Soliman, whose department’s monitoring is such a big failure.
The CoA report detailed several anomalies, including deficiencies in the screening process of beneficiaries and unliquidated fund transfers, in its review of the CCT scheme for 2010, half of which year is under the Aquino administration.
More to the point, it was during Noynoy’s first six months that the CCT funding increased heftily. The funding for Gloria’s CCT certainly wasn’t anywhere that big a budget that Dinky enjoys today — not to mention the billions she spends for her overhead, which really is unconscionable.
Worse, the poorest of the poor aren’t even getting the doleouts, as many of the beneficiaries, which the CoA audit had stated, were not the poorest of the poor.
Yet there went Lacierda, claiming that all these anomalies have been corrected. What basis does he have in claiming that, when the CoA report clearly shows that not only have they not been corrected, but that given the bigger CCT budget yearly, the anomalies would be bigger and the waste of billions would be worse.
In its review of the program, the agency said that out of 1,400 sampled 4Ps beneficiaries, “96 were not extremely poor and were earning income” which translates to about six percent of those sampled that would be equivalent to about 206,000 households of the total 3 million current beneficiaries of the CCT.
The CoA findings cast doubts on the accuracy of the procedures and methodology used during the selection of poor households.
What exactly have been corrected? The accuracy of the procedures? The methodology? Lacierda does not say, because, as usual he lies through his teeth by claiming that all these anomalies have been corrected.
That’s not good enough and not credible either. To this day, the anomalous practices continue. To this day, the CCT is an abject failure. And to this day, Noynoy and his officials refuse to admit responsibility and accountability.
And yet they have the nerve to claim that they tread the straight path.
Nobody seems to believe in what they say anymore.