THE Office of the Ombudsman on Monday ordered the dismissal of five Department of Agriculture (DA) officials in connection with the anomalous implementation of agricultural projects in Negros Occidental under the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) of detained Sen. Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada.
Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales said DA Regional Field Unit (DA-RFU 6) Regional Executive Director Larry Nacionales, Accountant III Candelaria Martinez, Officer in Charge Mira Talabong, Accounting Section chief Mae Nones and monitoring staff Roger Salcedo were found guilty of gross misconduct.
Under the law, a public officer is guilty of gross misconduct if it is proved that he committed transgression of some established and definite rule of action, more particularly unlawful behavior or gross negligence.
The Ombudsman also imposed upon Nacionales and four other officials, the accessory penalties of cancellation of eligibility, perpetual disqualification from holding public office, forfeiture of retirement benefits and bar from taking civil-service examinations.
According to Morales in 2007, an undated project proposal was prepared and approved by Estrada for the “Diversified Farm Assistance for Negros Occidental Agriproducers,” with a total budget of P20.5 million.
The Ombudsman, citing a letter issued in December 2007, said that Estrada requested Nacionales to implement the agricultural projects with JCB Foundation as non-governmental organization as project implementor.
“The agricultural project involved the acquisition of 28 units of hand tractors, 28 units of rice threshers, 56 units of power sprayers and 5,000 bottle of Nobac Urban Organic Enzyme and Microbial Decomposition Activator, including freight, shipment and delivery costs,” she said.
Morales said based on the special audit report of the Commission on Audit (COA), several audit observations were uncovered, such as non-delivery of the farm inputs and farm implements, falsified certifications for the equipment, simulated bidding, equipment and products were grossly overpriced by as much as 74.5 percent or equivalent to P14.2 million.
She also said the freight, shipping, trucking and delivery expenses totaling P1.018 million were without factual and legal basis, and the actual recipients of the liquid fertilizers could not be determined because the master list bearing the signatures of farmers did not indicate the quantity received by them.
“It was also discovered that the supplier for the agricultural equipment and JCB Foundation had the same address,” she said.
“There is gross inexcusable negligence when they merely signed the certifications, accomplishment reports, as well as record the transactions in the books of DA-RFU 6 when they very well know they should have conducted periodic monitoring and evaluation on the project as well as verified and checked the documents submitted by JCB.”
Currently, Estrada together with Senators Ramon Revilla Jr. and Juan Ponce-Enrile is detained at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center inside Camp Crame in Quezon City after the Ombudsman found out that they took undue advantage of their official position to illegally divert, in connivance with certain respondents, their respective PDAF allocations to the Janet Lim-Napoles NGOs, in exchange for kickbacks/commissions amounting to more than P172 million for Enrile, P242 million for Revilla and P138 million for Estrada.