RAISING taxes to meet Cebu City’s proposed P100 billion annual budget for 2024 is an insult to the people, said former mayor Tomas Osmeña.
He told SunStar Cebu’s news and commentary program “The Intruder” on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, that it is important to see the actual situation of the city to see where it is going.
“Where does the money go? The people are suffering and what I see is a pattern that is really an insult to the people,” he said.
“He wanted to raise taxes to give a bonus of P35,000... you are raising taxes so that you will win in the next election,” he said, referring to Mayor Michael Rama, who, through Vice Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia, announced last Monday, Oct. 23, that regular and casual employees of the Cebu City Government, as well as elected officials, will receive a P35,000 Christmas bonus.
Garcia said the bonus will be drawn from the general funds.
Osmeña said that when speaking about an actual project, the City spent P6 billion on the South Road Properties during his time and it is operational.
He said the current administration has already spent P3 billion on the new Cebu City Medical Center and the building is still unfinished.
In a previous interview with SunStar Cebu, Osmeña said he knew why the City Government wanted to raise taxes.
“Let’s say, somebody has P5,000 (tax) and they (city government) will raise it to P20,000, then somebody will approach...you only pay P10,000, they will give P2,500, it’s a sort of corruption,” he said. “They will never hit the target. It’s just a way of terrifying people. Hey! You have to pay P20,000, but wait I can fix this. Okay, how much?”
However, he admitted that corruption doesn’t just exist within the government but also among the people.
During his term, he said he ended up firing a city assessor and two assistant assessors.
“I could not find a way to find evidence against the city assessor. It turned out that everybody was part of it, even the janitors, even our own spies,” Osmeña said.
In an interview with radio dyHP on Wednesday, Oct. 18, Mayor Rama said he is proposing a P100 billion annual budget for the 2024 fiscal year, doubling the current budget of P50 billion, of which only P7.5 billion has been collected as of October, according to the City’s Treasurer’s Office.