ILOILO City – Two department heads at Iloilo City Hall remain opposed to Mayor Jose Espinosa III’s order to hire additional contractual workers, better known as “job hires”, in excess of allocation because that would be “misappropriation of public funds.” They are Joren Sartorio of the General Services Office (GSO) and Noel Hechanova of the Environment and Natural Resources Office (ENRO).
Sartorio and Hechanova pin their objection on the report of City Treasurer Jinny Hernando showing irregularity in the recruitment of more job hires than allowed within the specified allocation of 3,687 job hires who are specifically identified and assigned to various offices.
Two other employees with monetary expertise – City Accountant Michelle Lopez and City Budget Officer Ninda Atinado – share the same opinion.
In a letter addressed to City Administrator Hernando Galvez, Hechanova sought to “recall the newly-deployed excess personnel as we are unable to obligate the existing budget for such large number of additional personnel.”
Hechanova would not accommodate more than 131 job hires because that is the number allocated to his office.
Sartorio, on the other hand, objected to the hiring of 180 additional personnel tasked “to conduct Information Education Communication (IEC) campaign on solid waste management in all barangays in the city” on the alibi of compliance with the city’s 10-year Solid Waste Management Plan as required by the Local Government Code.
Sartorio noted that hiring the 180 personnel would be incompatible with the re-enacted City Sanitary Maintenance Project specifically as noted by the City Legal Office in its legal opinion No. 07-19 dated Feb. 27, 2019 that “it is the primary duty of the department/office or unit concerned to keep expenditures within the limits of the amount allotted.”
However, Sartorio recommended to hire only 36 job hires for the months of April and May, as that number would fall within the allowed allocation.
It was City Treasurer Jinny Hermano who initially opposed hiring of “job hires” and refused to sign payrolls, saying, “We need to follow strictly the monthly allocation program because the issue is the absence of appropriations.”
The city government has an allocation for 3,687 job hires. But Mayor Espinosa had appointed 189 excess job hires in January and 199 more in February this year. Paying them would entail additional disbursements of P784,000 for January and P1,057,000 for February.
The said job hires remain unpaid as of yesterday.
The treasurer, however, has been under grueling pressure to sign payrolls for the excess personnel amid public allusion to “political motives” behind the recruitment of the excess job hires. Since they owe their appointment to the mayor, they could be persuaded into voting for him in the hope of catching up with the survey front runner.
The mayor, presently, is lagging behind the frontrunner candidate Cong. Jerry Treñas in all surveys conducted by Random Access Consultants, Inc. (RACI) for this election period since last year./PN
