The DBM (Department of Budget and Management) admitted on Tuesday that they made a “clerical error” in listing former Compostela Valley Rep. Manuel “Way Kurat” Zamora as the one who received a whopping P3 Billion in pork barrel funds during the year 2007.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad Jr. clarified that the DBM made a mistake in including Zamora’s allocation of P500,000 from his Priority Development (–foul word(s) removed–)istance Fund (PDAF) in the same statement of allotment release order (Saro) it issued for the P3-billion project of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
Congressman “Way Kurat” Zamora (Photo Credit:Inquirer.net)
The Saro Number (A-07-095396) project of Rep. Zamora for a multipurpose building or Davao Hospital in Tagum City is the same with the P3 billion allocated for the DPWH’s road maintenance projects nationwide. It was a clerical error in part of the DBM.
For the past few days, the former representative and current Vice-Governor made headlines for the enormous amount of money he received based upon the Commission on Audit (COA) special report on the pork barrel funds released from the year 2007 to 2009, showing that Zamora exceeded his annual P70-million pork allocation, way ahead of the 71 lawmakers who also received an overflow of PDAF during the period.
Secretary Abad stated that the mistake was due to human error, according to him, the processing of SARO numbers used to be one manually. He already informed COA about the error and the agency has already apologized to Zamora’s daughter.
For more information watch the video report by ABS-CBN:
If these people in the COA and DBM who cause shame to former Congressman “way kurat” Zamora are not thick faced, they should resign their position now that is proven that former congressman “way kurat” did not have a 3 billion PDAF in one year of his being a congressman. These publicity hungry COA and DBM executives has no place in this government. Surely an apology is not enough.