Photo courtesy Rappler
THE Commission on Audit would like the Office of the Ombudsman to look into the alleged overpayment in the helicopter rental deal that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Region 11 entered into in 2012.
The COA en banc referred the matter to the Office of the Ombudsman as it affirmed the notice of disallowance against the DENR’s payment of P498,000 for the rental of the helicopter from J. N. Agabon Enterprises.
But it also reduced to amount to P362,182, representing the excess charge.
Found liable for the disallowance were DENR regional executive director Jim Sampulna, Accounting Section chief Judith Abrenica, and JN Agabon Enterprise.
The COA said no public bidding was conducted when the DENR Region 11 leased the helicopter for P45,272 per hour.
This failed to follow the requirements under the Government Procurement Reform Act, it said.
Even if it agreed with the DENR that the rental was a “small value procurement” since it was below the P500,000 threshold, it said the department was still required to get proposals from at least three independent suppliers.
The DENR regional office leased the helicopter in 2012 for the aerial survey of the boundaries of Regions 11 and 13 as part of its drive against illegal logging.
State auditors, however, questioned the payment of P498,000 for the helicopter for 11 hours of flying time, noting that the aerial survey only took three hours.
In their appeal, the DENR officials said that as per the Aircraft Operations Log (AOL), the helicopter was in the air for over five hours.
They also said the waiting time should be included in the count, and this would increase the chargeable rental hours to nine hours and 37 minutes. As such, the excess time should be just a little over one hour and a half.
In its ruling, the COA en banc said the AOL showed that the helicopter arrived at the Davao airport at 8:25 a.m. instead of 7 a.m. as stated in the terms of the lease, as reported by abogado.com.
It also said the other pages of the AOL that would show the time of takeoff and the landing were not submitted to it by the petitioners.
It found the petitioners’ reasoning for the inclusion of waiting time in the computation to be “unconvincing (for) being a self-serving statement.”
“Since the petitioners failed to provide convincing evidence to support their computation of the total number of hours to be used in determining the proper amount of payment, that calculation of the [supervising auditor/audit team leader] should be upheld,” it said.
The COA also instructed its Prosecution and Litigation Office to forward the records of the case to the Ombudsman for investigation and possible filing of charges.
