NCIP hit for extravagance

MANILA, Philippines — A Manobo lawmaker has condemned the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) for its extravagant spending on meals and accommodations while tribesmen go hungry and are summarily driven away from their ancestral lands.

“We have long slammed this agency because it uses us for their selfish interests,” said Bayan Muna Rep. Eufemia Cullamat, the Manobo tribe’s first and only representative in Congress.

“There is an allocated budget for indigenous peoples’ protection, but we do not feel this supposed protection. Instead, they use this budget to plot on how to tear down our unity in protecting our ancestral lands from mining projects,” she said.

Cullamat made the remarks after the Commission on Audit (COA) criticized the NCIP for spending P4.81 million in taxpayers’ money on expensive meals and luxurious accommodations in Northern Mindanao over the past two years.

State auditors found that the NCIP spent P3.83 million on meals and accommodations in 2018 and P979,695.93 in 2019, or over P4.8 million in two years.

Moreover, the audit report said the transactions were paid “even with incomplete supporting documents,” contrary to government audit rules and other rules barring agencies from incurring “irregular, unnecessary, extravagant, excessive and unconscionable expenses.”

“Verification showed that only high-end hotels and restaurants were given requests for quotations and letters of invitation to bid,” the COA said, adding that it “seemed that venues for training, seminars and conferences were already predetermined.”

The report added that activities held in distant places like Highland Resort in Camiguin and Duka Bay in Medina, Misamis Oriental, “proved to be costly.”

The NCIP in Northern Mindanao said it would “strictly observe prudence on the use of government funds and explained it usually holds events in venues where participants are located.