MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Druge Enforcement Agency has been flagged by the Commission on Audit (COA) for for P31.66 million worth of questionable financial transactions last year.
“One hundred DVs (disbursement vouchers) were found to be not supported with official receipts (ORs) as required by existing laws, thus casting doubt on the validity of the claims.”
coa in its 2019 annual audit report on the PDEA.
According to the state auditors, the transactions which were the subject of the disbursement vouchers were made from October to Dec 31, 2019. While COA has received the DVs for auditing, they could not confirm the validity of the supposed payments as there was no proof that the payees received the amounts.
COA stated that according to Presidential Decree 1445 or the Government Auditing Code of the Philippines “claims against governmeent funds must be supported with complete documentation.”
Records of PDEA showed that their transactions were made with various gasoline stations, information and communications technology providers, a telephone company, courier services, trade and marketing firms and industrial and general merchandise suppliers.
Aside from that, there also were payments for water supply, catering, security, janitorial and printing services.
The PDEA was advised to order its cashier division to always demand an OR for every payment made and to refrain from processing succeeding claims “without complete documents,” according to PhilStar.
PDEA’s reply incorporated in the audit report says that is financial management service “has been exerting its best effort to secure the ORs from the payees.”