PNP justifies unused anti-red funds

Philippine National Police chief Guillermo Eleazar. FILE PHOTO BY GRIG MONTEGRANDE

Philippine National Police chief Guillermo Eleazar assured the public on Thursday that the organization’s 2020 counterinsurgency funds remain intact, pointing out they were impossible to disburse in just two months.

He was referring to underutilized funds allocated to the PNP from the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) budget which the Commission on Audit (COA) flagged in its 2020 audit report.According to the COA, the PNP only actually used P86.57 million out of the P722.955 million released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for its anti-insurgency projects. The COA further noted that only P240.8 million was obligated, which left P482.15 million unused funds.

In a statement on Thursday, Eleazar assured the public that the funds are intact, pointing out in Filipino, “It’s not negligence and especially not anomaly that caused the underutilization of the NTF-Elcac fund for the PNP last year.”

He said that “because of the pandemic, those funds were only released to the PNP on Oct. 26, 2020, and this cannot just be spent in the two remaining months of that year.”

According to Eleazar, the DBM advised the PNP that the NTF-Elcac fund is considered a “continuing appropriation” and could be used until Dec. 31 this year.