PSA: 405 of 677 OVP fund recipients 'non-existent'

Out of the reported 677 recipients of confidential funds of the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, 405 have turned out to be spurious, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said in its report to the committee on good government and public accountability of the House of Representatives.

- By DELON PORCALLA

Committee chairman Manila Rep. Joel Chua revealed the information yesterday in his opening remarks at the resumption of the hearing on the confidential fund issue. He said the information was drawn from an omnibus certification requested by his committee from National Statistician Dennis Mapa.

Based on the PSA document, there are no records of birth, marriage or death that matched the names in the acknowledgment receipts for disbursements of confidential funds of the OVP and DepEd. Vice President Sara Duterte was DepEd chief until July this year. She resigned after a falling out with President Marcos.

Marizza Grande, assistant national statistician, confirmed the certification.

“Based on the list, we have verified that 60 percent came out with a negative result in our records, our database,” she said in Filipino during an interview with “Storycon” on One News.

The PSA official, however, clarified that “the absence of the civil registry record cannot be a conclusive proof of the individual’s non-existence.”

“It is not conclusive proof or evidence that these people do not exist,” she said. “There are cases when the birth certificate of an individual is not registered or we do not have the additional information needed for the verification.”

Militant lawmakers from the threemember Makabayan bloc expressed vindication from the PSA certification, saying this would strengthen the impeachment cases against Duterte.

“The shocking revelation that 405 out of 677 alleged DepEd confidential fund beneficiaries…. validates our position that public funds were systematically misused through fraudulent documentation,” the bloc said in a statement.