Thursday, January 03, 2008 Delaying pay a 'mortal sin'
SAYING it is a “mortal sin” not to give employees their salaries and bonuses on time, acting Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama yesterday ordered an investigation on the delay in City Hall’s December pay.
The delay caused several City Government employees to greet the New Year without their salaries.
Rama did not say who will conduct the investigation but added that the team might include members of the Personnel Selection Board and the City Council’s committee on labor and employment.
City Treasurer Tessie Camarillo said the delay was caused by a technical problem during the uploading of information from a diskette into the depository bank’s system.
She said it affected not only Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) employees, as earlier reported. The City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) as well as Department of Education (DepEd) personnel under the City’s payroll also did not receive their Dec. 1 to 15, and 15 to 31 wages.
All the 5,000 City employees, though, received their 13th month pay last December yet.
By yesterday afternoon, the Land Bank of the Philippines already fixed the problem and the salaries were already reflected in the employees’ accounts, Camarillo said.
Deadline
She said the payrolls were sent to the bank on the deadline, which was last Friday, the last banking day for 2007. Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 were holidays.
“Why was it submitted on the deadline? Couldn’t they do it days or weeks before?” Rama said.
Camarillo explained that they couldn’t submit it earlier because of the additional work in implementing the mandatory 10-percent wage increase effective last October.
She said they had to add up the withholding taxes of 5,000 employees and balance them, which takes time. They also had to prepare the notices of salary adjustment.
The release of the salaries would have gone without incident if not for a technical problem.
The Land Bank, Camarillo said, worked until 10 p.m. last Dec. 28, but its computer could not read portions of the diskette.
“The problem could have been corrected had it not been a holiday the next day, because we were still in our office. We talked with bank representatives, who told us that nothing could be done also because their centralized system needed to be activated in Manila,” she said in Cebuano.
She said that since she became acting city treasurer in 2003, it was the first time a technical problem delayed the release of salaries.
“We could not say it’s the fault of Land Bank because they even worked overtime just to accommodate City Hall. It was really beyond our control na pud because it was the technology that failed, and the following day was a holiday,” she added.
The city treasurer said there is a need for more personnel, especially those trained in audit and payroll preparations, so employees would receive their salaries on time, if not a few days ahead.
“Our salaries (here in the City Treasurer’s Office) are also delayed,” Camarillo said. (RHM/With LCR)
