This I just cannot understand. Someone please help me try to comprehend how blatant corruption and malversion of public funds this is. Apparently, when the Bureau of Customs hits their annual target, they get P500 Million in reward which the can spread amongst themsleves. The Customs Chief, Napoleon Morales, got a lump sum of P5.3 Million pesos! OMGWTFBBQ is that? That money could have just gone to all the victims who were devastated by the typhoon Frank! Every single centavo of that P500M came from OUR TAXES. There could have been so many uses for the P500M but instead of helping the average pinoy with it, we end up giving it to the people who are already swimming in cash.
Here’s an excerpt from the article on Inquirer:
MANILA, Philippines – “Everybody happy,” a common phrase in bribery, was proven true at the Bureau of Customs in 2006 when everyone — from Commissioner Napoleon Morales to his executive assistant to security guards to messengers to utility workers — received rewards for meeting the year’s target.
The reward system adopted by the BoC was revealed at the Senate hearing on smuggling Monday. A list of those who received their share of the P500-million reward money for the year showed Morales at the top of the list, getting P5,293,206.13.
But Senators Juan Ponce-Enrile and Francis Escudero on Monday said distributing the P500 million reward money among Customs officials and employees is at the very least “not proper” and could constitute “fraud.”
Both pointed out that the target that year was achieved by advancing the 2007 payments of some big importers, mostly oil companies.
“There should not have been any reward because they did not achieve the target through their tax efforts,” said Enrile, who called the practice “not proper” and “not within the law.”
“Mali naman yata yun (I think that’s wrong),” Escudero said.
This is just stupid. It’s really disappointing to see things like this happening in our country, especially in a time of crisis.
This is stupid very stupid