The jail officer who exposed alleged double budget on subsistence allowance for meals of detainees relentlessly followed up on the local officials’ action on Bohol District Jail in their possible share in the anomaly.

Valenzuela Jail Officer Angelina Bautista told The Chronicle that she is certain the “double budget scheme” has also been practiced in Bohol after learning about the statement of BDJ Warden Jose Rosebel Abueva that the allocation for meal allowance of the detainees has been shouldered by the provincial government.

Bautista said the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) has budget for the same purpose, but it is allegedly redirected to the pockets of top jail officials.

She supposed the provincial officials are aware of this and expected that action will be taken on the matter, especially that she already informed some of them about it.

Bautista cited a news item containing Abueva’s statement that the provincial government allocates P50 a day for each of the 491 inmates of BDJ.

Tracing the same pattern, Bautista also sought for investigation on the jails in Bataan, Quezon, Albay, and Iloilo, in addition to the one she exposed from Valenzuela.

Bautista said the issue had already been referred to a committee at the House of Representatives.

She expects it to be tackled during a plenary session after the break of the legislators.

Bautista also furnished The Chronicle with a copy of House Resolution 2134 introduced by Bataan 2^nd District Rep. Enrique Garcia Jr. in the last week of May this year, “calling for an investigation, in aid of legislation, into the reported anomaly in the disbursements by the BJMP for subsistence allowances of inmates in various provincial jails which were already shouldered and paid for by the local government units concerned”.

The House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability tackled the measure among matters for preliminary determination during the committee hearing on June 9.

Garcia cited “extensive media reports” about Bautista for surfacing “to denounce what she claimes to be the anomalous practice of certain BJMP officials who enter into separate Memoranda of Agreement (MOA) with various provincial government units whereby the latter are made to shoulder the subsistence allowances of inmates in their provincial jails while, at the same time, the said BJMP officials are collecting disbursements for the same purpose from the BJMP fund”.

Bautista first exposed the same alleged practice in Bataan Provincial Jail wherein BJMP entered into a MOA with the provincial government of Bataan on August 18, 2010 and since then, it had been the basis for the latter to regularly appropriate and disburse funds for the subsistence of the inmates “without knowing that for the same period of time, the BJMP has been appropriating and releasing funds supposedly for exactly the same purpose but which never reached the inmates”.

The province of Bataan spends and average of P20 million every year for the inmates’ subsistence, according to Garcia.

“It was subsequently discovered that similar MOAs have been entered into by the BJMP with the provinces of Bohol, Iloilo, Albay and Quezon, where the same anomalous scheme may have been perpetrated,” Garcia stated in his resolution based on the documents submitted by Bautista.

The House Resolution noted on the complaints of plunder that Bautista filed before the Office of the Ombudsman against BJMP officials

Garcia then sought for an action from colleagues “to determine the extent of the anomaly and the damage inflicted as there may be other provinces which may have been similarly victimized by corrupt BJMP officials who apparently have taken advantage of the present situation where jurisdiction over the provincial jails has yet to be delineated by law”.