In spite of the recent changing of the guards, the Philippine Community Council of NSW continues to be plagued by problems that won’t go away.
Almost immediately after being elected to the top post, new president Jun Relunia had to leave for Europe for a pre-scheduled holiday. And who took over the reins of the supposedly peak body? An old guard of course — the Vice President External who has run for re-election many times, got himself re-elected, resigned 5 days later only to retract his resignation.
His first verdict was to reject the proposal for a professional and good quality souvenir program in favor of a cheaper version. I am reminded of an old movie entitled ‘The gods must be crazy.’ I wonder what this PCC officer will do next when given the chance to make an important decision.
With only a few days remaining for the grand Philippine National Day Ball, I shudder at the thought of what might happen if president Relunia once again allow him to take charge of the organisation.
And of course, there’s the predicament that the new treasurer faces. The former treasurer is now the new auditor. It will be recalled that OLGR rules were violated during the past term of the former treasurer. Money intended exclusively for disaster relief in the Philippines was withdrawn from the PADER account. That is of course on top of PCC’s constitutional requirement of two signatures that were violated by the same treasurer.
But wait! Was the treasurer solely responsible for the unauthorised withdrawal?
Philippine Sentinel is in possession of a letter signed by Mr. Larry Musolino, manager of Westpac. The letter clearly states:
. . . “We have evidence to suggest the payments made under ONLY one authority are incurred by your association and thus were valid payments and even though they may not have followed the account authority with 2 people to sign, your President Elsa Collado confirmed the payments to be accurate and correct . . .”
Ms Elsa Collado continues to sit in the PCC board as Immediate Past President together with Bulseco and Banan.
Will the problems of PCC ever go away? Maybe what it needs is a complete overhaul. — Dino Crescini