LAOAG CITY — The Schools Division Office of Ilocos Norte (SDOIN) has crafted a way to make life easier for heads of public schools in the province.
The SDOIN has launched its so-called maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) downloading day for government-run schools in the province.
Unlike in previous years, when a school had a hard time getting its monthly share of MOOE due to the tedious processing of documents, today, school heads only have to follow the schedule set by the SDOIN for their MOOE downloading day every month.
The school heads only have to submit their liquidation reports to the finance section of the SDOIN. 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 (International Standards Organization) journey. We saw there’s a lot to be improved, so we initiated some reforms for our continuous improvement,” Schools Division Superintendent Vilma Eda, who is leading the initiative, said in an interview on Friday.
During the scheduled MOOE downloading day on Friday, SDOIN accountant Grace Turqueza-Rabang said school heads from the 318 elementary schools, 54 senior high school, and 28 non-implementing schools had 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 the receipt immediately. Once the liquidation is ok, the finance will receive it and then go to the cash section to receive the MOOE for the following month,” Rabang explained.
“We are so delighted 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 liquidation requirements, we can now focus more on other important concerns in our respective schools,” said Aileen Rambaud, Principal of the Badio Elementary School in Pinili town.
From Pinili town, Rambaud took her more than an hour drive to reach the Division Office on Friday. After submitting her liquidation papers at 2:15 p.m., Rambaud was able to finish her transaction in 15 minutes.
Like the other school heads who were satisfied with the latest innovation of the SDOIN, Arnel Callanga, school head of Lanao Elementary School, lauded the implementation of the MOOE downloading day.
“It makes our work a lot easier because before, it took about a month for us to process the release of our school’s MOOE,” Callanga said.
Annalyn Sevilla, Education Undersecretary for Finance, Budget and Performance Monitoring, described the SDOIN’s MOOE downloading day as a “very innovative approach” in improving the department’s processes, and in checking where the MOOE of schools go.
Sevilla hopes that other schools in the country will do similar initiatives for the timely delivery of services at the school level. (Leilanie Adriano/PNA)
