Mayor Leni Robredo underscored her administration’s firm stance against corruption during the ISAng Bansa, ISAng Pangarap: National Summit for Public Governance organized by the Institute for Solidarity in Asia on Thursday.
Speaking on public sector integrity, the former vice president detailed how her office has been addressing corruption while managing limited resources and battling high poverty and unemployment rates.
“Coming into the office, we inherited a constrained budget of just P1.8 billion with P1.1 billion allocated to salaries alone, and only about P520 million remaining for our essential programs,” Robredo said. “With such limited resources, every peso lost to corruption is a peso stolen from our people’s future. This is why integrity is not just a principle; it is an economic imperative.”
Robredo shared that her first directive upon assuming office on June 30 was to sign an executive order establishing a zero-tolerance policy against corruption. “We declared there is no place in Naga for inflated project costs, bribes, and kickbacks,” she said.
One of her initial reforms was the removal of the city’s confidential funds — a move she described as symbolic of transparency and accountability in governance. Her administration also strengthened Naga’s internal audit service to function as an independent watchdog, created new spending and monitoring guidelines, and implemented baseline performance reviews across departments.
Robredo emphasized the importance of public participation in keeping officials accountable, noting that citizen involvement remains “a foolproof way” to prevent abuse of power.
When asked about the lessons drawn from a previous flood control scam, Robredo said it prompted stricter review systems and reinforced integrity measures in the city’s financial processes.
She closed her address by invoking the guiding principles of her late husband, former Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo: “He believed sa Naga ang pagpipigil ng korupsiyon ay magsisimula sa pamahalaang tapat, bukas, at may integridad. To me, Naga is a beacon of good governance, and we needed to ensure that it remained so.”
