Sunday, April 15, 2007 Norma sets new rules for pay
LAPU-LAPU City Acting Mayor Norma Patalinjug wants all employees at City Hall to personally collect their salaries from the treasury office.
After learning that persons other than the concerned employees would claim the salaries of up to 20 job-order personnel, Patalinjug directed all disbursing officers not to honor authorization letters or a special power of attorney in releasing salaries.
What is bad about the practice, she said, is that job-order and honorarium employees assigned in different barangays are only getting P700 or P500—some even as low as P300—instead of the amount they are supposed to receive.
“So where does the money go?” Patalinjug said.
“I just want all employees to make most of the P1,500 honorarium they receive every month,” she told Sun.Star Cebu.
The acting mayor also learned that allowances of some job- order and honorarium employees whose services had long been terminated are still being collected, either by political leaders or barangay officials, through a special power of attorney.
To do away with the reported irregularities and so that all workers will get what the government owes them monthly, Patalinjug sent a memo to City Treasurer Elenita Catagcatag.
Patalinjug said she wants transparency in the disbursement of funds and for the person himself to be the one to collect his salary.
An urban poor leader, who gets an honorarium from the Office of the Urban Poor every time he attends a meeting, was asking who received his honorarium since he stopped attending the meetings.
This prompted Patalinjug to send a memo last April 10 to Urban Poor Office head Erlinda Beduya, ordering her to submit a report on its organizations and committees.
That day, she also sent a separate memo to Catagcatag asking her to furnish the mayor’s office a complete copy of the payroll and vouchers indicating the salaries of all casual, job-order, honorarium, consultant and confidential employees for February and March.
Patalinjug also sent a similar memo to City Accountant Buenaventura Igot but so far none of these office heads complied with the acting mayor’s request.
She also sent a memo to Federico Morabe, head of the Human Resource Management and Development Office, for a list of all regular, casual, job-order, honorarium and confidential employees.
But Morabe did not comply and instead sought the legal opinion of City Attorney Vincent Joseph Lim.
In his letter to Lim, Morabe said he only has records of the regulars, casuals and confidential agents of City Hall.
Patalinjug said if the officials will not comply with her memorandum, this means they are defying her orders. She will discuss this with her advisers to plan her next move.
Patalinjug is running against reelectionist Mayor Arturo Radaza in the May 14 elections.
The Department of Interior and Local Government ordered her to take over the duties of Radaza, who was preventively suspended for six months, pending the investigation of the allegedly massive overpricing in the purchase of lamp posts used during the Asean summit last January. (OCP)
