Thursday, September 04, 2008 ‘Don’t blame me for bad roads’
THE opposition-dominated Mandaue City Council removed P57.2 million allocated by Mayor Jonas Cortes for road maintenance in the recently-approved supplemental budget.
With the removal, Cortes warned, “If they see bad roads, don’t blame me.”
Cortes asked councilors whether the roads in Mandaue City are so well-paved they no longer need asphalting and maintenance.
The council also removed from the mayor’s proposed supplemental budget the P18-million allocation for heavy equipment; P13.2 million for other machinery and equipment; and P16 million for the geographic information system.
Cortes had originally proposed P205.53 million as the city’s first supplemental budget, but the council passed only P126.5 million.
The allocation for job-order workers was slashed from P35 million to P28 million.
Savings
Cortes said that despite cuts in the supplemental budget, his administration saved P29.58 million in the hiring of job-order workers and non-hiring of casual workers, compared with the previous administration.
Cortes also said the Clean and Green program workers are not new, contrary to the claim of Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna.
The mayor said the program already existed in the previous administration, when he and Fortuna served as councilors. Cortes said they initially allocated P10 million for their salaries in the 2008 proposed annual budget but the council slashed the amount when it passed the budget.
Cortes said savings generated by the city in fuel consumption and hiring of workers were used to come up with his proposed P205-million supplemental budget. It wouldn’t be sourced through loans, as what the previous administration did, he said.
Computation
Mandaue City Administrator Briccio Boholst said that Cortes originally allocated P35 million to pay 1,755 job-order workers from July to December 2008. But the council cut the amount to P28 million and, using its own computation, said the amount will only last from July to September.
He said this was why the council presentation for job-order workers’ pay was bloated.
Cortes said his allocation for job-order workers this year is only P102.17 million, P10.89 million lower than the previous administration’s P113.06 million.
He also said the previous administration allocated P16.993 million yearly for casual employees, which was incorporated in the payroll for regular employees.
Cortes said that in his term, casual employees were abolished as “job-order workers include those that used to be known as casuals.”
Cortes said he was also surprised when Fortuna reported that the “new listing” of 454 city employees for the Clean and Green program surprised the city council.
Request
Asked why the list was submitted only recently, Human Resource Management Office (HRMO) Head Eutiquio Sanchez said he merely acceded to the city councilors’ request for details of their job-order workers. He said they did not ask about the Clean and Green workers.
Clean and Green employees have been classified differently from job-order workers since the time of form
er mayor Alfredo Ouano to former mayor Thadeo Ouano up to the present administration.
Job-order workers get P215 per day for an eight-hour workday, for 22 to 26 days a month. Clean and Green employees work only for four hours a day and get P2,660 a month.
Mayor Cortes said in his 2008 proposed annual budget that he allocated P10 million for Clean and Green and another P10 million for traffic enforcers, all under the “lump sum” appropriation.
But the city council transferred these two items, lumped them together, placed them under “other programs and projects” and slashed its total allocation to P17 million.
The P17-million funds for Clean and Green and traffic enforcement became part of the P58.923 million for “other programs and projects” for job-order workers. (OCP)
