By VINCE NONATO
THE Commission on Audit should scrutinize the funds of barangays as closely as it has been looking into the “pork barrel” of senators and congressmen to ensure that elected barangay officials are not making money out of their positions, Interior Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas II said Tuesday.
In a press briefing, Roxas also said the Department of Interior and Local Government is working on a proposal to assign teachers to serve as board of election tellers (BETs) in towns where they are not residents so they need not fear for their safety.
The barangay is the smallest political unit in the Philippines. Elections for 326,568 positions of barangay captain and kagawad in 42,208 barangays were successfully held nationwide on Monday, except in earthquake-ravaged Bohol, Zamboanga City, which is still recovering from September’s standoff, and in areas where the voting was aborted.
Roxas told journalists that some barangay chairpersons and councilors were said to be profiteering out of their villages’ internal revenue allotments (IRA), or allocations issued by the national government for the spending needs of local government units, including barangays.
“Kung titingnan, ‘yung IRA, hindi ganoong kalaki. Madaling kaligtaan, madaling balewalain (At first glance, the IRA of individual villages does not seem that large. It’s easy to overlook and ignore),” he http://www.matrita.com/online/ said.
But the funds of 42,000 barangays, when put together, amount to billions of pesos, Roxas said.