Wrong town hall photo used in Capitol disaster handbook
The Cebu Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office have printed a wrong photograph of a town hall in its disaster preparedness handbook that was earlier questioned by the Commission on Audit.
A photo of the façade of the municipal hall of Sogod, Southern Leyte was mistakenly used for the Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan – a Contingency Plan for the Municipality of Sogod, Cebu for the year 2018-2022.
Named technical consultants in the handbook are Berkman International, Certeza Infosys Corporation, and A2D Project Research Group for Alternatives to Development Inc.
PDRRMO chief Baltazar Tribunalo was the Country Advisor on ChildCentered Disaster Risk Reduction of Plan International, one of the largest children’s development organizations in the world.
This is not the first time Tribunalo’s team has committed such a mistake.
His colleagues in the Plan International were sued by Ocean-action Resource Center (ORC), a small environmental non-profit organization based in Silago, Southern Leyte, also for alleged abuse and intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement of a P37million project proposal.
Among them was Rodel Bontuyan, the former area manager of Plan InternationalPhilippines, who is now the officer-incharge of the Cebu Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO).
The ORC alleged that these officials including Bontuyan had undermined their rights and legitimacy as the original project proponent and major contributor to the proposal Adaptation to Climate Change by Strengthening Natural Resilience.
Plan International had secured funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) for a climate change adaptation project in Silago and St. Bernard, Southern Leyte.
Plan executives chose Leyte Development Center, Inc., a local nongovernment organization that focuses on disaster response based in Palo, Leyte, to implement the project.
COA, in its 2017 report, also has asked the Cebu Provincial Capitol for the list of recipients of the 17,600 pieces of Disaster Preparedness Handbook entitled “Pagpangandam sa Katalagman” worth P4.4 million.
COA found out that the distribution list attached as supporting document to the disbursement voucher for the procurement of the said handbooks did not bear names and signatures of the heads of the 824 recipient schools to ascertain that the items were duly received by the identified beneficiaries.
COA recommended for Capitol to direct the PDRRM Officer to submit a distribution list with signatures of the heads of the identified beneficiary schools or their authorized representatives above their printed names acknowledging receipt of the handbooks to prevent disallowance in audit.