In two and a half years at the head of the Ibagué Comptroller’s Office, Edna Margarita Murcia has made a total of 40 trips financed with the control entity’s checkbook.
This was just one of the many aspects that was discussed in the political control debate that took place last Thursday morning in the Municipal Council and to which Murcia historically attended to account for its management.
In the responses to the questionnaire sent to the councilors, several points were highlighted. Among them is that the comptroller had allegedly omitted how much was spent on travel expenses on those 40 trips.
“They detailed it in a table that they attached to the response, but they forgot a small detail: the values,” denounced Andrés Acevedo, who added in statements to the media that the displacements are equivalent to five months outside the city.
And Murcia’s responses left a ‘disappointment’ in several lobbyists, who noticed gaps in the control body’s report. (See more: The responses of the Comptroller’s Office left a ‘disappointing’ in its debate in the Ibagué Council)
In relation to the accounts and transparency of contracting, Acevedo highlighted alleged discrepancies between what was presented to the Council and what was reported by the Comptroller’s Office on the contracting platforms. “You can’t come here with such superficial answers,” he added.
The management of resources by the Ibagué Comptroller’s Office is of great importance, considering that in 2024 alone the entity managed a budget of almost $4,546 million.
In the section intended to detail the distribution of this large budget, Murcia preferred not to go into details and limit himself to saying that public money was spent on “operating expenses and acquisition of goods and services.”
In terms of budget recovery, the figures for the last two years show that in liability processes $155,529 million were recovered in 2022, $14,455 million in 2023 and $181,777 million in 2024.
After what appear to be evasive answers, with points that remain half-hearted and do not go into detail, the political control debate concluded with a reference to the controversy that arose a few years ago with the former mayor of Ibagué, Andrés Hurtado, who had denounced alleged extortion by the Ibagué Comptroller’s Office.
Murcia clarified: “To date, in my capacity as comptroller of the Municipality of Ibagué, I have not made any complaint against the engineer Andrés Fabián Hurtado, former mayor of the city, due to the statements he made. Regarding the complaints that the Mr. former mayor has filed against me, I inform the citizens that, to date, I have not been notified of any process against me where the complainant or victim is the former mayor.”
