CoA affirms disallowance of MWSS’ P27-M cash incentives

Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) Building. — INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA — The Commission on Audit has junked with finality the appeal of Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System officials to lift the disallowance of P27.11 million in cash incentives to personnel.

In a recently released three-page decision, the CoA rejected the separate petitions for review by MWSS Administrative and General Services Manager Florendo Batasin, Jr., and Legal Services Department Manager Darlina Uy on a technicality.

The CoA said the appeals were filed out of time, rendering the decision of the Corporate Government Sector Cluster 3 final and executory.

It pointed out that, under Section 3, Rule VII of the 2009 Revised Rules of Procedure of the CoA, the MWSS officials had six months to appeal the cluster director’s decision to uphold the four notices of disallowance (NDs) issued on June and July 2013.

The CoA noted that the MWSS officials appealed the NDs in December 2013 and January 2014, after 180 and 183 days had already elapsed. After the cluster director denied the appeals on January 2015, it took another 31 days for the MWSS officials to file a petition for review with the CoA on February 2015.

This meant that a total of 211 and 214 days elapsed.

The NDs covered P14.72 million in cost of living allowance, P8.71 million in representation and transportation allowance, and P3.68 million in amelioration allowance. Through this recent decision, the NDs became “final and executory.

“Based on the foregoing evaluation, the consolidated Petitions for Review were filed out of time,” the decision read. “Having attained finality, the assailed decisions of the Cluster Director is immutable and unalterable, and can no longer be modified.”

The CoA stressed that filing an appeal was “not a right, but a mere statutory privilege.”  SFM