EDITORIAL Calamity aid, symptom of a bigger scam
The Commission on Audit has put its foot down on the issue of a 2013 calamity aid in the amount of P20,000 each that Cebu City officials and employees gave themselves. The COA already disallowed the aid earlier but the city appealed. Recently the state auditing body rejected the appeal and ruled that every centavo availed must be returned to government coffers. The City has indicated it may appeal again.
On the surface, the rejection appears easy to understand. Justification for the aid was no thicker than a shoestring. True, the aid was given in the aftermath of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in October of 2013 and super typhoon Yolanda in November of the same year. But that is as close to a justification as the aid can get. All of the recipients suffered no more than frayed nerves from the twin natural occurrences.
The quake ravaged mostly Bohol. And except for a few edifices and landmark structures, no real damage of note was felt by individuals in Cebu City. The same is true with Yolanda. While it devastated Leyte and Samar and parts of northern Cebu, Cebu City mainly got wet from the rain. And there is no calamity in that. So why was a calamity aid given then?
Because, as has become a very bad habit in the Philippines, local governments have arrogated the power to declare a state of calamity for no other reason than to secure easy access to cash, regardless of what the cash is for – as this particular issue has more than clearly illustrated. Why, there are even instances when a state of calamity is declared even before a calamity actually happens. And all for the same reason, which is to make the cash ready when needed.
But this access to cash is not limited to calamities. The Philippines is probably the only country in the world where government bonuses are given at the drop of a hat. The universal understanding of a bonus is that it is a gratuity given in recognition of a job well done. But almost anybody you ask, Filipino or otherwise, will tell you that the Philippine government is not only one of the most corrupt bureaucracies in the world, it is one of the most inefficient as well.
In other words, the Philippine government is hardly one whose employees you would want to give bonuses to other than those that are mandated by tradition and law. And yet, as is more appropriately said in Cebuano-hapit
bonus (there is a bonus after almost every fart). Why, even the police is given a bonus for simply doing its job like catching criminals.
This is not a brief against bonuses, only those that are unwarranted and unjustified. How can anyone want to reward a government employee with hard-earned tax money when, at 8 a.m., a clerk does not go right to work but spends 30 minutes chatting and grooming, then spends another 30 minutes chatting and grooming again before logging out promptly at 5 p.m.? And when calamity strikes 500 kilometers away, they get a calamity bonus because some bright boys declared a calamity anyway.
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