POC must look into unliquidated NSA advances–Go

MANILA, Philippines —Embattled track-and-field chief Go Teng Kok has called on the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) to create a committee that will look into the unliquidated cash advances of national sport associations (NSAs).

Go said the POC panel should be able to find out where the NSAs spent their budget allocations from the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC).

Fifty-eight NSAs, including Go’s Philippine Track and Field Association, accummulated a total of P130.6 million in unliquidated advances from the PSC, the government agency that funds the training of national athletes and the programs of their respective mother associations.

Aquatics, whose athletes failed to win a single gold medal in the recent 26th Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia, has the biggest unliquidated amount of P10,526,638.

The NSAs with huge amounts of unliquidated advances include those that also failed to win a gold in the SEA Games— gymnastics (P6,654,044), canoe-kayak (P5,654,863), shooting (P5,674,931), volleyball (P5,179,330), football-futsal (P5,014,331), karatedo (P4,863,921), wrestling (P4,521,280), weightlifting (P4,313,545), muay (P3,536,144),
sailing (P3,279,203), table tennis (P3,066,635), pencak silat (P2,351,303) and windsurfing (P2,178,428).

“The committee should find out where the money was spent,” said Go, who explained that Patafa’s financial obligation of P4,530,730 is well accounted for.

“For its part, the POC should require the NSAs to justify these advances.”

PSC chair Richie Garcia has issued a directive ordering the NSAs to liquidate the advances before Dec. 31 or risk having their requests for future financial assistance turned down by the agency.

Go was declared persona non-grata by the POC a few months ago over his dispute with the Olympic body.