A P229 million TESDA anomaly

EDITORIAL

Some 2009 “graduates” of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) courses were “paid” to pretend that they actually underwent call center training while others were just made to sign documents and vouchers in exchange for money.

The Commission on Audit (COA) discovered these anomalies in 2010 after auditing the agency’s Pangulong Gloria Scholarships (PGS) project which has so far been a failure.

State auditors said TESDA, then headed by former Rep. Augusto Syjuco, embarked on a Group Training Scheme (GTS) in January 2009 with TEKBOK Providers (TBPs) which involved entering into agreements with 22 organizations and partners under a Enterprise-Based Group Training Scheme (EBGTS).

The agency spent over P229.4 million for 31,812 graduates, at least 60 percent of which were supposed to be assured of employment immediately after completing their sources that would be monitored by a purposive tracking and reporting.

State auditors said the memorandum of agreement between TESDA and TBPs states that the latter shall provide the former with monthly progress reports on the utilization of scholarship, disbursement of funds and other required data for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

The project however failed to meet its objective for various reasons including weak implementation of standards set for the program specifically in the programming, training and training evaluation stages; non-enforcement of the monitoring/control and reporting system strategies by the agency; and failure of the TBPs to establish purposive tracking system to ensure that the employment rate target is attained, among others.

State auditors also eventually discovered fictitious conduct of training of some TBPs by submitting names of scholars with incorrect address and contact number as well as similar strokes of signatures; double entry of names in the same training program; overlapping of training schedules of participants; and submission of list of scholars with the same pictures but different names appearing in the same training or different training programs.

And in their effort to further check on whether or not graduates, especially those who underwent call center training considering that over P151.5 million or 66 percent of the total budget was allotted to 139 institutions under the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), actually benefited from the program, the audit team tried to contact some 211 graduates from People 2 Outsource, Mirof Resources, and Incomtech Philippines Inc.

Results bared that 69 did not reply or had invalid contact numbers, 82 had doubtful contact numbers or are no longer using them, and 42 have undergone training in one call center company and not with the TBP but were later made to be scholars of PGS.

Notably, the audit team said three confirmed that no training course was conducted but was made to fill-up/sign vouchers and receive allowances ranging from P300 to P750.

“Based on the said interview results, it was determined that out of 211 reported graduates, only 50 or 23.70 percent were employed. Out of those employed, there is a probability that 42 graduates 86 percent of those employed were not actually scholars of PGS and yet payment for training fees amounting to P210,00 was made to one of the TBPs through BPAP,” the COA report said.

“Verification showed that 42 of the alleged graduates were already undergoing training being conducted by a call center company when they were made to sign in the scholarship vouchers by some training providers who visited their call center company. The said trainees willingly signed the scholarship vouchers because the promise that they will be given a certificate from TESDA. However, up to this writing no certificate has been issued by the training providers to these call center agents,” the audit report read.

Heeding the COA’s recommendations, the new TESDA management under director general Joel Villanueva has created an investigating team through the issuance of TESDA Order No. 172 Series of 2011. Charge in court the culprits.