MANDAUE City Mayor Jonas Cortes’ proposed wage increase for nearly 2,000 job-order employees is “clearly a form of early vote-buying,” said Rep. Nerissa Soon-Ruiz.

“Judging from the bulk of his request for a supplemental budget, I can see that it is aimed at raising funds for the coming elections. It is also meant to buy the support of the 1,800 or more job-order employees,” said Soon-Ruiz in a press statement.

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She said the job-order staff’s wages account for P300 million or nearly 20 percent of the P1.7-billion proposed supplemental budget.

The council is scheduled to discuss the proposal in its regular session tomorrow, but the increase is supposed to take effect on July 1.

City Administrator Briccio Boholst said the allegation from the Soon-Ruiz camp “only shows how narrow-minded the congresswoman is.”

He said the 1,789 job-order employees who will get the increase, if approved, include personnel hired by the congresswoman’s allies in the council.

“These daily wage earners deserve the long overdue increase, which the members of the council also agreed (on) because the said employees are also doing public service,” Boholst said in a press statement sent by the Mandaue City Public Information Office.

Cortes previously announced the increase during the unveiling of the Citizen’s Charter and launching of the Anti-Red Tape Program at City Hall.

In August last year, the Cortes administration’s proposed first supplemental budget of P205 million included P35 million for job-order workers’ wages until December.

Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna, the council’s presiding officer, had asked for a list of the workers and their assignments, so the council could verify that they were not “ghost employees.”

In response, Mayor Cortes said his administration spent about P102 million a year for 1,794 job-order employees, compared to P113 million a year for the previous administration’s 1,919 such workers. Job-order employees are hired for specific projects, like street cleaning and garbage collection, and are contractual employees.

Soon-Ruiz and Cortes are expected to clash for the city’s mayoral seat in the 2010 elections. The congresswoman is on her last term and barred from seeking reelection, and already announced Fortuna as her preferred candidate for the House of Representatives.

Exchange

Though the election is still close to a year away, the Soon-Ruiz and Cortes camps have started trading criticisms about each other’s projects and priorities.

Soon-Ruiz, in her statement, said she is “appalled” that the Cortes administration seems to be prioritizing his “political appointees” over the 300,000 residents of Mandaue.

“Gipalabi niya kining mga JOs kay sa kinatibuk-an sa mga Mandauehanons nga hangtod karon naglaum nga mahatagan niya ug basic services sama sa hingpit nga pangkolekta sa basura ug sa pagsulbad sa baha sa ilang dapit (He is prioritizing these job-order employees instead of all the other Mandauehanons in need of efficient garbage collection and an end to flooding in their communities),” she said.

But the Cortes camp, in their statement, said that by questioning the proposed job-order workers’ increase, Soon-Ruiz “is alluding that the whole council is buying votes
and that the employees and even the Mandauehanons can be bought.”