Senate studies proposed new SALN form

MANILA, Philippines—Senators are set to look into the prescribed new form for the statement of assets, liabilities and net worth that more than one million public officials and employees will have to accomplish by April 30 this year.

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III has filed a resolution seeking an inquiry into the new requirements, saying the “complex form might lead to useless or unjustified complaints” against government workers.

Pimentel said he wanted to know if the new policy coming from the Civil Service Commission would not violate the law.

He noted that grounds for complaints on the new forms might simply be “the product of inadvertence, confusion, or honest mistake or misapprehension of difficult legal concepts.”

“There is a need to determine if the new form for the SALN complies with existing laws or just amounts to an unnecessary burden on public officers and employees,” he said in Senate Resolution No. 710.

Pimentel noted that the new policy would affect “more than a million public officials and employees.”

The new form now requires government officers to submit an even more detailed SALN, to include even personal and family expenses such mobile phone and grocery and other household bills.

“It can’t be that generalized. There has to be some details,” CSC chairman Francisco Duque III had said.

The new rule takes effect amid the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona. Among the charges against him is that he failed to publicly disclose and truthfully accomplish his SALN, copies of which are deposited with the high court’s clerk of court.