Zulueta blasts Atinado anew, calls her 'most incompetent'
Iloilo City Councilor Perla Zulueta has had enough of City Budget Officer Ninda Atinado's incompetence. So infuriated is the veteran lady legislator of Atinado's latest boo-boo that she called the latter "the most incompetent budget officer Iloilo City ever had" during last Wednesday's regular session of the Sangguniang Panlungsod.
Atinado, who earlier earned Zulueta's ire for not appearing even once before the SP Committee on Appropriations that is presently reviewing the P930-million proposed 2008 executive budget, was again the subject of the Molo councilor's wrath after it was discovered that there was a whopping P1,973,909 deficiency in Supplemental Budget Nos. 2 and 3 that was passed by the city council last April yet.
"It seems that in Supplemental Budget No. 2, the City Treasurer's Office certified the amount of P971,165 as Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) Adjustment for April, P194,233, 20 percent of which, or P194,233, should be set aside for development projects. I don't know what happened--maybe the calculator went haywire or Atinado just doesn't know how to do simple computations--the appropriation was short by P32,372. But what made the matter worse was that instead of asking the Treasurer's Office to plug the deficiency, Atinado decided to just keep mum about it, perhaps hoping no one would discover the deficiency. In Supplemental Budget No. 3, she totally forgot about the 20% that should be set aside for development projects, resulting to another P1,941,537 deficiency in appropriation, bringing the total deficiency to P1,973,909. This is the reason why we are now making corrections with Supplemental Budget No. 5, to rectify this glaring faux pas of Atinado," Zulueta lengthily explained.
"Frankly, we have never seen a more incompetent budget officer than the one we have now. It's certainly the first time since I became member of the city council that this happened, wherein deficiencies in appropriation were discovered in not one but two supplemental budgets," said the fiery councilor from Molo.
"What infuriates me more is that she doesn't even have the decency to apologize to us personally for this monstrous blunder. She even continues to snub the budget hearings on the flimsy reason that she was not around during its preparation. Feeling first lady sya," Zulueta further quipped.