Follow-Up on the Performance Audit on the Disaster Risk Preparedness Program of Malabon City

What COA Found

Malabon City implemented 10 out of the 11 recommendations of this Commission, which led to improvements in the city’s disaster preparedness. First, Malabon City intensified its revenue collections, which increased its Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (LDRRM) Fund. Under the PDRRM Act of 2010, LGUs should allocate funds amounting to not less than five percent of its estimated revenue from regular sources to support its disaster risk management activities. In CY 2017, the audit team observed that the city consistently fell short of this five percent fund requirement. Up to now, it is still below the five percent fund requirement because the city uses the actual revenue collection as its basis in computing the LDRRM Fund. We noted, however, that the LDRRM Fund has steadily increased and it almost doubled from about ₱53 million in CY 2012 to ₱95 million in CY 2020. This enabled the city to fund the operationalization of the activities in their Annual DRRM Plan.

Second, its DRRMC and DRRMO is functioning according to its duties and responsibilities under the PDRRM Act. The city also restructured its DRRMC to conform the requirements of the law.

Third is the issuance of an Updated DRRM Plan. In CY 2017, the audit team observed that the comprehensive DRRM Plan of Malabon City was inconsistent with the PDRRM Act because of its limited content. It only contained operational flow charts, list of relevant committees, and the corresponding resources. The revised version contains a list of DRRM-related projects and activities, baselines, targets, indicators, timelines, lead office and implementing partners. It now serves as a roadmap of all the DRRM-related activities of the city. This also led to the regular issuance of the Annual DRRM Plan. Prior to the CY 2017 performance audit, the city has not issued an Annual DRRM Plan. The plans still need some fine-tuning because there are portions that are vague and unsupported by a needs analysis report.

The audit team looked into the extent the city implemented its Annual DRRM Plans from CYs 2018 to 2020. In CY 2018, the city implemented 11 out of 14 (78.6%) activities listed in the LDRRM Plan; in CY 2019, 22 out 23 (95.7%); and, in CY 2020, 4 out of 23 (17.4%). In three years, the LDRRM Funds were spent on information and education campaigns, conduct of various DRRM-related seminars and trainings, stockpiling and prepositioning of resources, purchase of vehicles for disaster response, establishment of the DRR action center, among others. The items and funds for the stockpile were also used to augment the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) response efforts of the city. The unimplemented activities listed in the LDRRM Plan include: procurement of radio communication, monitoring and other relevant equipment, and procurement of additional rescue equipment, among others. For CY 2021, the city plans to construct a multi-purpose evacuation center, procure additional emergency vehicles, and others.

Why COA did this study

In Calendar Year (CY) 2017, the Commission on Audit (COA) audited the Disaster Risk Preparedness Program of Malabon City. The audit team issued a total of 11 recommendations under PAO Report No. 2017-03 to aid the city in improving its ability to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from, the impacts of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions.

Under international standards, COA is mandated to do a follow-up on its recommendations to determine whether the audited entity has addressed the problems adequately and remedied the underlying situation after a reasonable time.

In conducting this follow-up, the audit team evaluated the following: 1) the extent the audited agency implemented the recommendations and whether the actions taken were appropriate in response to the audit findings and recommendations; and 2) the extent the implementation/non-implementation of the audit recommendations made an impact on the program and its beneficiaries/the citizenry.

The scope of the audit covered implementation of Malabon City’s action plans on audit recommendations from CYs 2018 to June 30, 2021.

COA reviewed CYs 2018 to June 30, 2021 data and relevant documents, and interviewed officials and personnel from Malabon City to assess the extent of implementation of recommendations by the local government unit (LGU).

What COA recommends

COA recommends Malabon City to review and fine-tune the performance measures in line with Program’s goals and objectives; and align it with NDRRM Plan, if applicable. It would be beneficial to conduct a needs assessment or vulnerability assessment to identify specific DRRM-related issues that the city needs to address. The results of the assessment will help the city craft specific and responsive programs with clear target outputs, outcomes, and performance indicators.