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BY MAE SINGUAY
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January 15, 2018
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Dignadice: We will liquidate P8-million budget
BACOLOD City – The Bacolod City Government Employees Union (BCGEU) assured that it will furnish a financial report on its three-day year-end assessment activity.
The activity, which was held from Dec. 27 to 29, had an P8-million budget, courtesy of city hall.
Councilor Wilson Gamboa Jr. earlier filed a resolution that required BCGEU president Allyn Luv Dignadice to liquidate the expenses of the activity through a “financial, outcome and accomplishment report.”
Gamboa said he authored the resolution not to “criticize” but to ensure “public trust, accountability and transparency.”
“The content of the resolution was absolutely not tainted with malice but with the noble of intention of knowing where the public’s money – as big as P8 million – went,” part of the resolution stated.
Dignadice, in response, said she will submit the report to the Office of the Mayor and to the Commission on Audit (COA).
“This is a compliance based on the COA rules,” Dignadice stressed.
Gamboa questioned the P8-million budget for the conduct of the year-end activity, saying, “Was it expended judiciously and within propriety? Why must this yearend activity held for three days?”
He also said the activity has “legal issues.”
Gamboa cited Section 4 of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Budget Circular 2010 which “enumerates exclusions from coverage in the rules and regulations on the payment of cash gifts and year-end bonuses, the government personnel hired without employer-employee relationships (job order/casuals) funded from non-personnel services appropriations or budget.”
Dignadice, who served as BCGEU president since 2016, said she did not receive any Notice of Disallowance from COA after she conducted two activities for the worker’s union: the 2016 year-end assessment activity and the Employees’ Day in June 2017.
She added that it will take “a matter of time” to furnish the report because they were still gathering receipts, but stressed that “everything has been accounted.”
Dignadice belied that there were job order and casual employees who complained that the spending of the P8-million budget was an “injustice.”
She stressed that everybody was “happy.” During the year-end activity, they distributed food packages worth about P1,000 to job order and casual workers.
The regular employees, on the other hand, did not receive any of these food packages for they already got a P25,000 cash incentive under the Collective Negotiation Agreement of the city hall and the BCGEU, Dignadice added.
Gamboa said the distribution of gifts – such as the food packages – violates DBM Budget Circular 2010./PN
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