Wednesday, August 20, 2008 Mandaue CH ‘saves’ P10.89M by hiring fewer workers: Jonas
MANDAUE City Mayor Jonas Cortes yesterday said the City Government saved P10.89 million by hiring fewer job-order workers than the previous administration had.
He assured that the City has initiated counter-checking measures to prevent “ghost employees.”
In a press conference, Cortes said the City employs 1,794 job-order employees, whose pay will cost the City P102.17 million in a year.
In contrast, he said, the previous administration hired 1,919 of these temporary or casual workers and spent P113.06 on them.
Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna, however, urged the mayor not to skirt the main issue.
List
“Just give us the list of these job-order workers and where they are assigned, so we can validate,” he told reporters.
Cortes and Fortuna both used to serve in the City Council, which scrutinizes the City’s annual and supplemental budgets.
The mayor lamented that despite that the City’s savings, councilors still criticized the administration and even suspected that he employed “ghost employees.”
One of the items being questioned in the proposed P205-million first supplemental budget is the P35 million set aside to pay job-order workers for the rest of the year.
Cortes pointed out that the supplemental budget is anchored on realized income, surplus and savings. Not a single centavo will be sourced from loans, which was what the previous administration did, he added.
Human Resource and Management Office (HRMO) head Eutiquio Sanchez, at the same press conference, said that not all job-order workers can attend flag ceremonies. Some are assigned to man traffic and emergency hospital services.
One point the opposition previously raised was that if all these job-order employees do exist, there would be more than enough to fill City Hall’s grounds during flag ceremonies and other activities.
Assurance
The mayor, however, assured that the HRMO is constantly checking and counter-checking job-order workers assigned in every department.
Much as he wants to reduce the number of these employees, the mayor said, if the City stays within the 45 percent cap for personnel services, it will not be able to collect garbage, supervise traffic, clean streets, maintain the market or deliver other basic services.
Since his administration will now be implementing all its projects, and not assigning them to private contractors, the City will need that many job-order workers, said Cortes.
He pointed out that while the previous administration had only 58 job-order workers in the council, that number has now reached 95, plus five legislative assistants for every councilor.
But Fortuna said he knows nothing about these workers, as it is the mayor who assigned them, without the vice mayor’s request.
Besides, not all councilors have these job-order employees, he said. The mayor only assigned them to Councilors Beethoven Andaya, Jeffrey Ceniza and Procopio Villanueva and administration Councilors Diosdado Suico and Jimmy Lumapas, said Fortuna.
Fortuna stressed that the mayor should stop criticizing and blaming the council, as what they are asking for is just a list of these employees and their office assignments.
“And that’s all,” he said.
In his press conference, the mayor also outlined how the job-order workers’ funds are divided: P58.92 million for programs and projects in the annual budget; P3.1 million for slaughterhouse workers; P4.45 million for public market workers; P698,564 for hospital workers; and an additional P35 million in the first supplemental budget. That amounts to P102.17 million.
The previous administration, he added, spent P53.165 million in the general fund on these workers; P19 million in the supplemental budget; P3 million for the hospital workers; P4.8 million for slaughterhouse workers; P14 million for traffic enforcers; P16.1 million for “clean and green” program workers; and P3 million for market workers.
