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DAVAO
CITY—A Jesuit priest has asked the National Economic and
Development Authority (Neda) to place the list of
foreign government-assisted projects on the Internet to
allow communities to prevent its bleeding from
corruption.
Fr.
Albert Alejo, SJ, director of research and publications
of the Ateneo de Davao University and a prime mover of
the anticorruption movement Ehem, threw the challenge to
a Neda representative at the open forum Tuesday of the
presentation of
Mindanao studies at the Ateneo de Davao.
“How
about putting the list of ODA [official development
assistance] projects on the Web, so that we, the
communities, would know which project went to which
community, and which agency received which of the ODA
projects and funding,” he told the forum after the draft
bill was presented on the Institutionalization of Social
Preparations, Transparency and Accountability in the
Implementation of Development Programs, including ODA.
He said
the government should place the information on the
Internet, “for the people, the communities to know what
are available for them, and for the communities to act.”
He said
that an informed community would help contain the
bleeding of development funds due to corruption.
The
suggestion came out after the Mindanao Studies
Consortium Foundation Inc. (MSCFI), a group of heads of
universities and research institutions in Mindanao, came
out with a position paper supporting the bill. The
position was part of the resolution of the group issued
during its September meeting this year in Cagayan de Oro
City.
“The
publication of ODA funds [through e-Governance] could
serve as preventive mechanism facilitating transparency
and accountability,” the group’s position paper said.
“Web site and links for donor funds should be utilized
as mechanism for funds monitoring.”
The
group said that private special funds, including ODA,
“are usually not part of the regular budget of the
government and, therefore, not subject to audit.”
MSCFI
said, however, that “there is a need for people or the
community/stakeholders to be informed of the status and
update of the project through an accessible media.”
“The
approach and objective for the pursuit of transparency
and accountability should be anchored on prevention,” it
said.
Covered
in the monitoring was the access of foreign funds to
finance researches, which was the turf of MSCFI, and the
group said that the “project implementer/researcher and
the project itself should include among its
considerations the responsibility to ensure positive
impact or repercussions toward future implementers and
projects.”
A Neda
representative in the forum, Catherine Laguesana, said
that “as of now, we don’t have the facility [to place
the ODA online]”.
“We have
a data on that but not online. But in the other regional
offices [of Neda], we have a monitoring process,” she
said.
Prof.
Rufa Guiam, head of the
Peace
Studies Center
of the Mindanao State University-General Santos City,
also suggested to the Neda to include in its monitoring
the funds from foreign funding agencies “outside of the
ODA, what we call the INGO, or international NGOs.”
“While
there is a need to become proactive, I wonder if Neda is
authorized to look at the funding agencies outside of
the the ODA,” Guiam said.
Guiam
told the BusinessMirror later that her suggestion was to
ensure that there would be no duplication of projects or
to ensure that projects really exist.
“There
is a perception that the projects of these INGOs are
really answering the needs of the communities, but we
need to know what are these projects,” she said.
“While
these funds may not be as huge as the ODA funds, they
are equally big funding still,” she said. |
