Aide to Clear Mayor’s Name

Mayor Michael Rama’s unliquidated cash advances from the Cebu City government amounting to P557,150 will be liquidated by one of his close aides by next week so that the mayor’s name will be removed from the list of persons with monetary obligations from the city.

Alvin Santillana, operations officer of the City Disaster-Risk Reduction and Management Office, is hoping that he could finish collating all the officials receipts of their expenses made when he and other volunteers travelled to Mindanao early this year.

Santillana and several City Hall employees and other civilian volunteers travelled to the province of Compostela Valley that was badly hit by typhoon late last December to help the typhoon victims.

It was the city that shouldered the expenses of the group, including their food, drugs and medicines for the typhoon victims and the cost of some of their equipment they used during the trip.

Since Santillana is not bonded by the government to allow him to receive public funds that will be used for their trip to Mindanao, it was Rama who made the cash advance and gave the amount to Santillana.

“Tingali mahuman na nako paghatag ang kwentada sa among nagasto ingon man ang mga resibo kay para ma-clear na tawon ang mayor sa unliquidated cash advance,” Santillana said.

The accounting section had announced that aside from the mayor there are some City Hall officials and personnel who still have unliquidated cash advances amounting to more than P12 million.

Philipp Zafra, the chief of staff of the Office of the Mayor, (P4.5 million); Administrative Assistant Henry Tumalabcad, (P2 million), both amount were taken from the Intellligence Fund, and Administrative Assistant Carlos “Charlie” Reyes, (P3.9 million) and Virgilio Salaum, (P1 million) taken from trust fund.

Although Zafra claimed that he and Tumalabcad had already submitted their liquidation to the Commission on Audit (COA)-Manila but Accounting could not delete yet their accountability from the records until after their liquidation papers is approved.

The salary of Reyes has been withheld by the accounting department since January because of his failure to liquidate the P3,993,200 even if the money was granted to him on July 3 and August 7, 2012.

Reyes said the cash advance was granted to him for the giving of prizes and tropies for the winners of basketball tournaments in the barangays, but he failed to gather yet all the supporting documents of the expenses.