ILOILO City – Accountability at the Iloilo City Urban Poor Affairs Office (ICUPAO).
According to City Administrator Hernando Galvez, this was due to the office’s lack of permanent staff.
As its name indicates, ICUPAO deals with urban poor concerns, and primarily on their housing and livelihood needs.
Galvez is temporarily overseeing ICUPAO’s operation following the resignation of the office’s chief Roy Firmeza.
The office has a total of 35 staff including Firmeza who resigned on March 15, according to Galvez.
But only three of the 35 were permanent employees, the rest were job hires, he said.
Galvez stressed the importance of having a permanent ICUPAO staff. He discovered that some job hires were given crucial tasks that needed accountability such as determining whether a person is poor and homeless and thus may be qualified to avail himself of ICUPAO’s programs and services.
The city administrator said he was surprised.
“Public office is a public trust. Job hires’ contracts expire monthly and this makes their accountability tenuous,” explained Galvez.
According to the city administrator, he immediate ordered a stop to the field inspections of ICUPAO.
“We intend to have an accurate inventory of the beneficiaries or occupants at the city’s relocation sites,” said Galvez.
He planned to tap survey experts to do the inventory.
Government housing projects are for deserving beneficiaries only, and these are the homeless and the underprivileged, stressed Galvez.
The city government has decided not to renew the contracts of 23 job hires in the ICUPAO, he announced.
Their services were no longer needed, he explained.
Galvez recommended the renewal of the contracts of eight job hires only.
“I believe these eight are enough at the moment to handle the volume of work at ICUPAO,” he said.
ICUPAO may take in additional personnel when the need arises, he added./PN
