Is there trouble brewing between the PSC and the POC?
Will this not negatively disrupt the fluid preparations for the country’s preparation for the 2024 Paris Olympics that is barely a year away?
Just a few sunrises after Tim Cone and his boys captured the Asian Games basketball diadem, Philippine Sports Commission chair Richard Bachmann held a media conference denying involvement in sending a COA collection letter concerning the POC unliquidated funds amounting to P10 million.
The COA demand was contained in a memo sent to POC president Bambol Tolentino at the progress of the country’s participation in the Hangzhou, China Asian Games.
He explained that the COA letter did not pass through his office and that the COA’s action was purely a standard procedure practiced by the latter.
Tolentino was irked because the collection memo was ill-timed as his hands were full physically overseeing and monitoring Pinopy athletes competing in the continental sports joust.
This is another unwanted wrinkle in the PSC-POC relationship.
The POC president denounced the PSC in an Oct. 8 press release for the discourteous memo considering that the time period stipulated in it dated back to the 1998 era.
Tolentino said he was not yet around at that time.
That’s correct.
It behooves everybody why some idiot had the gall to send the collection letter when no definitive answer can be obtained ASAP anyway.
I know the issue quite well. I was still physically roaming the entire length and breadth of the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, covering every activity of each NSA holding office within its premises.
All POC presidents – who served from 1998 till the present – received the same collection letter during their respective terms.
From all appearances, the same has not been acted upon to this date.
Who is to blame for this snafu?
Obviously, you can’t pinpoint the blame on Tolentino.
You can probably fault the COA for not diligently pursuing its claim when the funds in question were yet in a stage of where full liquidation could have been made possible.
Receipts and all other pertinent documents might have already been lost (in transit because of office transfers, etc.) and misplaced by people who had cusotdy.
Some might have already crossed the Great Beyond or moved elsewhere abroad and could no longer be located today.
P10 million is P10 million.
But who will the COA go after if the POC today under Tolentino cannot liquidate the same because, for one reason or another, the documents are no longer in its possession and the personnel concerned are no longer around?
Can these funds be declared officially lost or what? The COA has an appropriate term to describe this situation.
It’s been 25 years hence. How incompetent and inefficient is the COA, tell us please. (Email feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com). GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!
