More than half of Colombian municipalities have not used funds allocated to child welfare on what they were supposed to, the country’s Comptroller General revealed on Thursday.
Colombian Comptroller General Julio Cesar Turbay Quintero informed newspaper El Espectador that there are cases where funds have been diverted into totally different ventures than the ones to which they were destined and that in some cases judges had seized the accounts intended for health and childhood.
In only 19% of the country’s municipalities was the money for child welfare actually spent on what it was meant for, the Comptroller General said.
Quintero announced that there were investigations being conducted into whether the misappropriation of funds occured through mismanagement or misadventure.
With regard to social expenditure in Colombia, the Comptroller claimed to agree with Government spending on areas such as education, health, housing, environment and social assistance, but he disagreed with housing subsidies, taxes on gasoline and non-welfare administrative expenses.
Quintero states that the investigation should serve as a warning about the need to protect social resources and to monitor the distribution of the General National Budget more rigorously next year.