By Leilanie G. Adriano
Staff reporter
LAOAG CITY—As it heads towards an effective and efficient delivery of basic services to its stakeholders, the Schools Division of Ilocos Norte (SDIN) initiated a one-stop-shop to speed up the downloading of maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) of government-run schools in the province.
Unlike in previous years when a school takes a long time to get its monthly share of MOOE due to voluminous process of documents, the SDIN led by schools division superintendent Vilma Eda set an appointment schedule during the MOOE downloading day of every month for school heads to submit their liquidation reports to the finance section. Once the submitted documents are complete, the cashier will immediately release the check ready for cash deposit on the same day.
“This started in our ISO journey. We saw there’s a lot to be improved so we initiated some reforms for our continuous improvement,” said Ms. Eda in an interview.
During the MOOE downloading day on August 3, 2018, Grace Turqueza-Rabang, SDIN accountant said school heads from the 318 elementary schools, 54 senior high school and 28 non-implementing schools convened at the division office conference room to process their liquidations.
“This is a one-stop shop. Each one has a schedule for the checking of liquidations for the smooth flow of transactions and if there’s refund, a cash personnel is on standby to provide receipt. Once the liquidation is ok, the finance will receive it immediately then go to the cash section to receive the MOOE for the following month,” explained Ms. Rabang.
“We are happy and proud because we are able to finish our MOOE transaction in just one day. Instead of going back and forth to the division office just to complete our liquidations, we can focus more on other important concerns in our respective schools,” said Aileen Rambaud, Principal of the Badio Elementary School in Pinili, Ilocos Norte.
After submitting her liquidation papers at 2:15pm on August 3, Ms. Rambaud completed her transaction in less than an hour.
Like some other school heads who expressed satisfaction on the latest innovation of the SDIN, Arnel Callanga, school head of Lanao Elementary School also lauded the implementation of the MOOE downloading day.
“It makes our work a lot easier because before, it takes about a month for us to process the release of our school’s MOOE,” said Mr. Callanga.
For her part, Annalyn Sevilla, Undersecretary for Finance, Budget and Performance Monitoring cited the division’s “very innovative approach” to improve the department’s processes and to check where the MOOE in schools go.
Ms. Sevilla hopes that other schools in the country will also emulate the same for the timely delivery of services at the school level.