Senator's promise to look into financial irregularities at State Universities and Colleges described in Diliman Diary's November 1 article on COA's 2009 audit reports

(Editor's note: The Dliman Diary has begun to make good on its promise to its readers to begin emailing members of Congress about financial irregularities at State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) (see: http://diliman-diary.blogspot.com/2010/11/commentary-this-little-piggy-goes-all_18.html) based on our reporting on the 2009 Consolidated Audited Annual Reports (CAARs) of the Commission on Audit. We are embedding below an email we sent to Senator Loren B. Legarda with similar emails sent to other Senators, including Senator Legarda's response. As we get more responses over time, we will update this particular dispatch. The Diliman Diary has the theory that with this kind of feedback to legislators, SUCs will henceforth be under greater pressure to render a comprehensive accounting of how the budgets allocated to them by the People are being spent and for what purpose.)

Re: COA's 2009 report on State Universities and Colleges

Monday, November 22, 2010 4:56 PM

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"Loren Legarda"  

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"diliman diary"

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"sweet malones"

Dear Mr Shahani:

Thank you for the information you provided. I shall instruct my legislative staff to look into these.

Best regards,

Loren

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From: diliman diary
To: loren_b_legarda@yahoo.com.ph
Cc: dilimandiary@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2010 10:55:55 AM
Subject: COA's 2009 report on State Universities and Colleges

Senator Loren B. Legarda Philippine Senate Pasay City Dear Senator Legarda: Greetings! The Diliman Diary is a bilingual online weblog that features stories in Diliman area in Filipino and English. It features everything from personal stories, technology, business, the arts, music, literature, theatre, film, politics, sports which impact the Diliman area and its netizens who may be located anywhere and in any time zone. In this regard, I have written an article dated November 1, 2010, entitled “State Universities and Colleges are Haunted by COA's 2009 Audits into their Financial Expenditures (A Series of Articles Co-located on one (1) continuously updated link.” This article is essentially an interpretation and condensed summary COA's 2009 Consolidated Audited Annual Reports (CAAR) on Metro Manila based State Universities and Colleges (SUCs). The link to the article is here: http://diliman-diary.blogspot.com/2010/11/state-universities-and-colleges-are.html In this regard, I would like to respectfully request you and/or your staff to take just a little bit of your precious time to read our article, because it shows a very broad pattern of unmitigated financial irregularities by and among SUCs. While I personally support maintaining and even increasing the budgets of SUCs, I am nevertheless very much against the siphoning off of taxpayer's money from existing budgets of the SUCs due to financial irregularities. As a concerned taxpayer, I am hoping that you will be able to employ your power to call the administrators to account for unaddressed concerns of COA that span several years. I am respectfully requesting you and your staff to take note of the valid points made by COA during budget hearings (for the 2011 budget) and even other hearings. This is all summarized in the article I wrote (http://diliman-diary.blogspot.com/2010/11/state-universities-and-colleges-are.html). Additionally, the article itself is based on COA's 2009 CAARs of SUCs which may be directly accessed at this link: http://www.coa.gov.ph/Audit/AAR.htm Salamat po! Very truly yours, Chanda Shahani Editor Diliman Diary UPDATE: The following is an email from Senator Pia Cayetano's office regarding the same email sent to senators and congressmen: RE: AcknowledgementWednesday, December 1, 2010 1:03 PM From: "pia@senatorpiacayetano.com" pia@senatorpiacayetano.com To: dilimandiary@yahoo.com30 November 2010 MS. CHANDA SHAHANI Editor Diliman Diary dilimandiary@yahoo.com Dear Ms. Shahani: This is to acknowledge receipt of your electronic mail dated 21 November 2010 expressing your concern on the unmitigated financial irregularities by and among state universities and colleges, and the unaddressed concerns of the Commission on Audit on the same matter. May God bless our country and our people! Very truly yours, SENATOR PIA S. CAYETANO By: (SGD.) ATTY. DENYA GRACIA J. UY-ANASTACIO Deputy Chief of Staff