Tesda set to file more graft raps vs Syjuco

The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) is poised to file fresh graft charges against its former chief, Augusto Syjuco, after audit findings showed alleged irregularities in the disbursement of scholarship funds when he was its head.

Tesda Director General Joel Villanueva said the agency would pursue charges against Syjuco after a just-released Commission on Audit (COA) report pointed to the misuse of roughly P58 million in scholarship funds in 2005 and 2008.

“We have been aware of this irregularity and we were just waiting for the COA’s findings before we took the appropriate legal action,” said Villanueva in a statement to the Philippine Daily Inquirer  from the United States.

“The recent COA findings will help us fortify the case and we will act based on these findings to the point of filing graft charges against former Director General Syjuco,” Villanueva said on Wednesday.

Highly irregular

The COA had found it “highly irregular” that Tesda transferred some of its funds to nongovernment organizations based in the second district of Iloilo, Syjuco’s bailiwick and which he currently represents in Congress. Syjuco was Tesda director general from 2004 to 2010. Prior to that he was also Iloilo second district representative.

The audit report found that Tesda’s central office gave P20 million to the Tagipusuon Cooperative, while its Region VI office gave P38.12 million to the Tagipusuon Foundation. Tagipusuon is an Iloilo-based livelihood and development organization.

The COA noted that Tagipusuon programmed the funds for school supplies for elementary and high school students, an allocation the audit agency found to be outside Tesda’s mandate.

Villanueva said Tesda’s own probe of the fund transfer found that P5.3 million of the P20 million given to Tagipusuon in 2005 remained unliquidated, so with a separate P13.2 million disbursement in 2009.  He said Tesda asked the cooperative to account for the monies in September 2010.

“Our own findings also found deficiencies in the fund transfer and a breach in the agency’s mandate of providing technical education and skills development,” said Villanueva in a separate statement Thursday.

Tesda earlier filed charges against Syjuco in the Office of the Ombudsman for alleged irregularities in the Pangulong Gloria Scholarship (PGS) program.