Good pay for an honest, efficient civil service

THERE is really nothing wrong with paying more to people who work in government. This essentially is my point here.

It seems that since President Aquino came out with that expose on the excessive pay and perks of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) in his SONA, the Commission on Audit (COA) has been extra diligent in looking into similar alleged anomalies in other government offices. It’s more than welcome news. The COA recently revealed the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation’s P268-million purchase of condominiums from El Shaddai’s Bro. Mike Velarde, for instance, which they said, quite rightly, was not part of PAGCOR’s mandate and its operations.

Recently, I saw a report that came out in ANC (and I assume other ABS-CBN news organizations) about the pay and perks of Senate officials, also based on a COA report. The news piece, however, did not include any statement or interview from the Senate, nothing from the employees or the Senators themselves.

But Senate President Enrile later came out with a statement answering the report. Enrile said he only authorized the adjustment of the Senate employees’ allowances to make it at par with those received by the House of Representatives. The House officials have been receiving the same benefits for the past 15 years, the ones cited by the Senate COA, which supposedly was the source of the news. Even, the Commission on Appointment officials receive these same benefits.

Enrile essentially said there was nothing underhanded in the effort to make the pay of Senate officials at par with those of their House counterparts. There was no additional outlay from the national budget. The allowances were taken from the savings of the Senate, out of their own budget. This was decided and approved in 2008 by the Committee on Accounts, then chaired by Ping Lacson, and Senate President Enrile himself. (The Senate employees started receiving the benefits in 2009.) Interestingly, Enrile has not seen the COA report on the Senate.

Indeed, one can’t compare the MWSS bonuses to that of the Senate employees’ allowances. The MWSS Board thought of and granted every imaginable name for a bonus—something like 25 months worth outside of their regular salaries—even as they were operating at a loss (P3.5 billion in 2008) and owed the government about P256 million in un-remitted earnings, and even as it failed to pay its own retirees’ benefits.

Like I said, there is really nothing wrong with giving government workers higher pay. This, in fact, should be part of our civil service reform, so we could attract the best and the brightest into government service.

But this (addressing low pay) should also be part of other reform measures, like the need to reduce overstaffed offices and improve service delivery, not to mention eliminate corruption and red tape.

What’s wrong for me is when you see government officials and employees receiving a tidy sum that is not commensurate to their performance, yung mga pa-kape, kape lang diyan. There are many like that in the bureaucracy and they should be weeded out, like those who get paid without even showing up for work, consultants who get checks for doing ambiguous jobs, those employees in “floating” status who still get paid for doing nothing. A lot of these people were appointed by politicians, or are themselves politicians.

There are many overworked and underpaid employees in government. They deserve to get more. There are many efficient, professional people in the Senate and elsewhere in the bureaucracy who deserve every peso they earn, and there are those who don’t.

Giving adequate remuneration is essential to ensuring an honest and efficient civil service, but it is just one component, relative to other policies, like proper recruitment and performing monitoring and evaluation. Otherwise, there’d still be many deadbeats in the bureaucracy.

Reconsider
MRT, LRT fare hike

We in the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) welcome the Aquino administration’s deferment of the increases in the MRT and LRT (or light train) fares. We, however, urge the President to totally forego these planned increases.

We consider said fare increases unreasonable and unnecessary, in light of government’s capability to continue subsidizing commuters. It is also harsh and unfair to minimum wage earners and other workers with fixed salaries.

Government should be helping employees get to work every day, not make it difficult for them to do so.

The light train commuters of the LRT and MRT are the people who dutifully pay as taxes up to 25 percent of their compensation income. They deserve their taxes back through safe, efficient and affordable means of public transportation.

Of the 4.2 million workers in Metro Manila, 2.18 million are minimum wage earners, and many of them take the elevated trains to work every day.

In the case of the P25 MRT proposed fare increase, it would be just like taking back the recent P22 wage adjustment, plus a lot more. I am referring to the statutory minimum wage for workers in Metro Manila that took effect only last July 1. The adjustment raised the daily floor wage by 5.8 percent, from P382 to P404.

A worker now spending only P30 for a roundtrip MRT fare would have to spend an additional P50, or a total of P80 roundtrip. That’s already a meal for most families. –ERNESTO F. HERRERA, Manila Times

ernestboyherrera@yahoo.com