CEBU CITY Mayor Edgardo Labella is planning to fill vacant plantilla positions with regular employees.

The City has 2,900 plantilla posts, including the ones for department heads and assistant department heads. However, these are currently in the hands of casual employees, said City Administrator Floro Casas Jr.

During the flag-raising ceremony on Monday, July 29, 2019, Labella mentioned that the 1987 Constitution has a provision on government employees’ security of tenure.

“We will start to fill these vacant regular positions because until now we just hire casuals,” Labella later told Superbalita Cebu.

The mayor said some City employees have been working between 20 and 28 years already, but they are not yet regulars. The workers must take the civil service eligibility exams for them to be qualified for regularization, said Labella.

Street cleaners, he said, must perform well for them to be hired again.

Labella has signed an executive order activating the personnel selection board and authorizing Casas to lead it.

Casas said they would post announcements for the vacant positions for 15 days. The board then would allocate five days for the acceptance of applications.

Hiring employees is a tedious task, according to Casas. However, the city administrator said filling plantilla positions with regular employees would make the work at the City Hall easier because the workers would have no risk of losing their jobs whoever the mayor is. / (from PAC of SuperBalita Cebu/KAL)