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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Audit office to Cebu town officials: Refund P2.25M bonus
By Jeanette P. Malinao
CEBU CITY -- Stop granting collective negotiation agreement (CNA) bonus to officials and employees.
This advice is found in the Commission on Audit (COA) report on the operations of Consolacion Municipal Government for 2004, and may have negative implications on other local government units in Cebu that released signing bonus.
Auditors cited that Consolacion "again" released P30,000 signing bonus for each employee in 2004 despite the notice of disallowance it issued on a similar bonus released in 2003.
Officials and employees were asked to refund the amount, totaling P2,250,000 for last year's release alone.
It is not only Consolacion that released such a bonus. Early this year, Pinamungajan town also landed in the news for releasing P100,000 bonus to each worker, P35,000 of which was for signing bonus.
Even the Cebu Provincial Government announced last Aug. 6, its 436th founding anniversary, the release this year of P10,000 signing bonus for each employee.
COA cited a Supreme Court (SC) 2002 decision against the signing bonus, which the High Court considers "a form of additional compensation prohibited under the Constitution."
Attached to the COA report is the SC decision showing that the court does "not find the signing bonus to be a truly reasonable compensation."
"Agitation and propaganda, which are so commonly practiced in private sector labor-management relations, have no place in the bureaucracy and that only a peaceful collective negotiation concluded within a reasonable time must be the standard for interaction in the labor sector," read the SC ruling.
"This desired conduct among civil servants should not come, we must stress, with a price tag which is what the signing bonus appears to be," the SC added in its decision on the signing bonus the Social Security System released.
The Municipality of Consolacion "defied" this SC decision, which was already pointed out to them.
The COA report stated that Consolacion granted signing bonuses in 2003 and 2004 "in total disregard" of an audit observation memorandum issued in February 2004.
A notice of disallowance was issued last Feb. 8, 2005.
As for Pinamungajan, its signing bonus was already released when the Provincial Board later disapproved the allocation.
Mayor Jeffrey Yapha had said they are willing to reimburse the amount, as they released it in good faith and after a thorough study.
A case is still pending before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas against Pinamungajan officials regarding the questioned bonuses.
The Capitol, for its part, has tangled for many years about the signing bonus for different reasons, such as the absence of a new annual budget.
The amount that Capitol workers asked for also varied within the years, from P12,000, P15,000 and then P10,000. (Sun.Star Cebu)
(August 31, 2005 issue)
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