MindanaoToday.com | Klarex hits back: Oca left Oro with P103M in bank, P2.9B payables
By: JIGGER JERUSALEM
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – After opting to keep mum on issues involving billions of pesos directed at him recently, Mayor Rolando Uy finally broke his silence and responded head-on to accusations made by the previous administration that he has been remiss in his duties by not promptly paying City Hall contractors and suppliers.
In an interview with reporters Monday, Jan. 15, Uy has clarified that he is fully aware of the city government’s obligations as he hit back former mayor Oscar Moreno who accused him of ignoring to settle City Hall’s payables.
“When I took over City Hall, I have not scrutinized closely the liabilities of the City Hall, but focused on leading the city recover from the Covid-19 pandemic … but accusations from the former mayor that I have reneged on paying contractors and suppliers have escalated,” the local chief executive said during the Monday interview.
Moreno and Uy used to be political allies but had since severed their ties when Uy took over City Hall in 2022.
For his part, Uy said his administration would try its very best to pay all obligations of the city government which stood at P2,973,984,666.31 as of June 30, 2022. The mayor’s term started at noontime on that day.
Uy noted that he had not complained that Cagayan de Oro’s coffers – being touted as a “billionaire city” – only had meager funds left when he assumed office.
Data from the City Accounting Office revealed that by June 30, 2022, the balance in the city’s general fund was a measly P103,205,588.48.
Furthermore, an analysis of the city’s “cash and cash equivalent” nosedived from P1,326,592,567 in 2018 to a mere P356,368,151 when Uy sat down as mayor. But despite that the surplus income of the city at the end of 2022 reached P872,229,400, a vast increase from 2021’s P247,511,461.
Showing data from the same office, Uy said that from June to Dec. 2022, City Hall paid a total of P192,183,970.83 in accounts payables to the local government’s suppliers of goods and supplies for the years 2020 and 2021.
From January to November 2023, the Uy administration paid a total of P743,837,486.95 in accounts payables to the local government’s suppliers of goods and supplies for the years 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Meanwhile, payments to contractors of infrastructure projects from June to December 2022 reached P1.5 billion.
Uy called on suppliers and contractors with account payables from the local government to write him so he could look for means to settle these liabilities.
On Jan. 3, 2024, Xavier University wrote the mayor to demand the payment of P7,805,365 as a rental for the use of the dorms at the Jesuit-run university’s Searsolin and Manresa facilities as Covid-19 isolation units from March 2020 to April 2022.
“We asked why this bill accumulated for 25 months when we knew the city government had enough resources to support these Covid 19 response expenditures,” the mayor said.
For this part, BenCyrus Ellorin, Uy’s political spokesperson, said that the mayor is asking a valid question because Moreno “had ignored the pleas of the people for more aid,” but the previous administration explained then that aid or “ayuda” is better left to the national government as the local government focuses its spending on improving the critical care capability of the city to fight Covid-19.
The Dept. of Health computed the Critical Care Utilization Rate (CCUR) in terms of available ICU beds isolation units and testing capacity.
“We told the people then that “ayuda” is for the national government to provide as the city government spends to protect and treat the people from Covid-19,” said Ellorin, who was a communications consultant of Moreno before serving as Uy’s spokesperson.
He further asked, “How come there are accounts payable for isolation units, when we were told that even financial assistance from the national government from Bayanihan 1 and 2, and local appropriations were spent mostly to improve critical care capacities?”
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