The Seal of Good Housekeeping as collateral

KUDOS to Alaminos City and the municipalities of Basista, Bautista, Burgos, Labrador, Laoac, Natividad, Sta. Maria and Sto. Tomas for getting the Seal of Good Housekeeping (SGH). The local government officials, led by the mayors, and their entire staff deserve a pat on the back and well wishes because it takes the entire lot to keep a government house in order.

The SGH is one of the seven programs of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) under its primary goal of creating “Empowered and Accountable LGUs”. Receiving the seal means the LGU excelled in four areas: good planning, sound fiscal management, transparency and accountability, and valuing of performance monitoring.

Fittingly, the seal comes with a cash award (P3 million for a city, P1 million for a municipality). This manifests that the winning LGUs are being trusted with more funds because they have shown that they handle public money well and are being fully open to the people on financial transactions undertaken.

As a next step, the DILG plans to make the SGH one of the qualifications for any town to secure loans from government financial institutions. We fully support this proposal, but with caution that the SGH should have been earned by the same local administration applying for the loan. Otherwise, a corrupt administration can simply benefit from the SGH earned by a previous administration that has proven itself in good governance.

As it is, the SGH serves as a reasonable guarantee that the loan will be used prudently by the applying LGU. Setting the seal as a loan application requirement will institutionalize this tool and it will then become not just another award that LGUs can display, but a kind of collateral in the form of a certificate of distinction for what public service should be – honest and dynamic.

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Chopper check

IN 2009, our police force bought one brand-new and two pre-owned choppers. Fine, but what’s this? The two pre-owned choppers were passed off as brand-new. Thus, they were bought at prices allotted for brand-new. Easily, the sale could have defrauded us of almost P30 million. Had Sen. Lacson not exposed the scam, we would not have known about it.

In the ongoing Senate probe, chopper-sellers Hilario de Vera and Archibald Legaspi Po named (Po particularly) Mike Arroyo, the former First Gentleman (FG), as the alleged owner of the two pre-owned choppers. FG denied this, claiming no document would prove he owned the choppers.

On Thursday, Aug. 11, FG, on motion of Sen. Lacson, is set to appear at the Senate hearing. If true that no document would make FG the owner of the choppers in question, then he should be brave enough to face his accusers.

One who is clean must always fear no one.

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