State auditors flag Misamis Oriental's JOs

 MISAMIS Oriental’s legislators remained tight-lipped as state auditors spotlighted their engagement of over 700 temporary workers in 2022, alongside the contentious practice of designating a lone wage collector for some of the workers.

In its 2022 audit report, the Commission on Audit (COA) questioned the “necessity and reasonableness” of the hiring of 737 “job order” workers or JOs which cost Misamis Oriental P75.4 million last year.

Job order workers are people hired on a temporary or contractual basis to perform specific tasks or projects for a government organization.

“(It) is dubious due to the actual functions performed by these JOs which do not fit the definition of a job order,” the COA report read in part.

The provincial board has kept mum about the matter in public or during their sessions. This reporter repeatedly tried to ask for comments from at least two provincial board members – Gerardo Sabal III and Dexter Yasay – but not one of them responded. In a phone call on August 14, Sabal declined to be interviewed because he was supposedly preparing for a meeting.

They did not respond to text messages sent to them on August 17.

Neither Misamis Oriental Vice Governor Jeremy Jonahmar ‘Jigjag’ Pelaez nor any of his staff was available when this reporter went to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan on August 16.

In the audit report, a copy of which was sent to Misamis Oriental Governor Peter Unabia on June 6 by COA-Northern Mindanao director Mathew Magno, state auditors pointed out the duplication of functions in the provincial board and the “non-submission of individual accomplishment reports, organizational structure, and staffing pattern.”

The COA said the hiring of 737 job order workers went against the guidelines set by the Civil Service Commission (CSC), COA rules, and the Local Government Code, thus, “affecting the regularity and necessity of hiring JOs and payment of their wages.”

State auditors also urged the provincial officials to exercise “due prudence” in hiring temporary workers to avoid unnecessary and excessive spending.

The officials can avoid this, COA added, by limiting the hiring of contractual workers, especially if their services are not required.

Auditors also advised the officials to coordinate or delegate the screening and selection of job order workers to the Provincial Human Resource and Management Office because it can properly determine the merit, fitness, and qualifications of workers.

The COA also recommended that the provincial board require its job order workers to personally prepare their daily time records and submit detailed accomplishment reports.

It called out the provincial board for allowing only one person to collect the wages of some of these job order workers. The report did not identify the collector.

“The wages of some of the JOs hired in the Office of the SP totaling P4.496 million were not claimed directly by them but were claimed and collected by a person with Special Power of Attorney,” the COA report reads.

State auditors said such a practice went against government audit rules.

“Stop the practice of allowing another person to claim and collect the salaries of the JOs and the transfer of cash from one person to another in order to protect government funds from possible losses,” read a part of the report.

In the 2022 audit report, the COA also flagged the capitol’s hiring of 37 consultants from January to June last year, which cost the provincial government more than P6 million.

State auditors found out that the consultants were “not prudently evaluated since their services were already undertaken by existing (local government) personnel, while three of them performed services that were not highly technical in nature.”

The audit report pointed out that the hiring of consultants doing redundant functions resulted in the provincial government incurring “unnecessary expenditures.”

It recommended that the Capitol instruct its department heads to incorporate the need for individual consultants in their respective Project Procurement and Management Plan and to make sure that these consultants meet the qualifications set under the Government Procurement Reform Act. (This article was first published on Rappler.com)

Goodbye, George

“In the fear and alarm, you did not desert me, my brother in arms.” ― Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms [1985]

 I LOST a dear friend. George Bagsic, one of the popular folksingers in the city died of cardiac arrest on Friday night.

 He told me his family was into folk music in Olongapo. His partner, who had since become his intimate partner, is a resident here. He relocated here in Cagayan de Oro after a contracted gig in South Korea.

 We first met under competitive circumstances. There was an acoustic playing contest in Butuan City and I enlisted as a contestant. He wasn’t but I was determined to outplay him — in musician’s lingo — lagyan. But he rose to the challenge. He also played his best piece.

 Weeks later, I saw him fetching water in our neighborhood communal faucet. We were both surprised that we were neighbors. From then on our friendship flourished. He became my brother from another mother.

 I remember that time when we broke in my brand new component. We used an LCD projector and enjoyed a concert like we were there by sitting on the floor, with a picnic like banig with a bottle of rum, ice, and two glasses.

 The skill he taught me with the guitar will his legacy to me. I remember he taught me one particularly difficult A chord structure — A major 9th dominant +13. He also taught me the creative phraseology of certain melodies.

 His last text message to me was on March 16. It was a memo for the performers at a resto-bar he was playing at.

 “Please be advised that our acoustic (performances) will be suspended…starting tomorrow March 17, 2020. Wait for further notice (when) to resume,” the memo reads.

 He was anxious because he lived from gig to gig. He had no day job like I had when I used to “lagare” the local bars with him before. Music was literally his bread and butter.

BURGOS STREET MUSIC COLLECTIVE

 With the bars in Cagayan de Oro closing as part of the preventive measures in containing the contagion, he was clearly in dire straits. He was at his wit’s end as to where to get the money to buy their next meal. His heart gave out.

 When I replied with a sad emoticon to his text message, he replied with a smiling emoticon with a halo. Rest easy, my dear friend. You will be missed.

Holding half the world

“If there is a god then he must be a man because no woman could fuck up this bad.” — George Carlin, Jammin’ in New York

ON Sunday, people across the globe commemorated International Women’s Day. It carried the theme: “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights.” The theme is in line with the United Nation’s campaign “Generation Equality,” which marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action which the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.

Here in the Philippines, we “celebrate” the whole month of March as National Women’s Month. This is anchored on 1988 Proclamations 224 and 227, and the Republic Act 6949 series of 1990.

The first proclamation declares that the first week of March, each year, as Women’s Week which culminates on March 8 as Women’s Rights and International Peace Day. The second proclamation provides for the observance of the entire month of March as “women’s role in history month.” While the congressional act declares March 8 of every year as National Women’s Day.

Notice that in the proclamations, commemorating women in the country has always been attached to other days also for commemoration — International Peace Day and History Month, respectively.

It took the government two years to give Filipino women a day solely for them.

The Philippine Commission on Women said that this year their theme is “We make change work for women.” This theme will be carried this year up to 2022. In its official website, the commission explains that the theme highlights the empowerment of women as contributors to development. The commission also points out that such development is based on the commitment of “malasakit at pagbabago.”

If that sounds familiar to you, it is because it is Digong Dada’s campaign slogan way back in 2016. I will not belabor how paradoxical the theme is. I know you are feeling the irony of it all — the misogynist character of this administration and its supposed respect to Filipino women. We have Senator Leila Delima and Vice President Ma. Leonor Gerona-Robredo to remind us how this administration deals with empowered women.

Fortunately, the United Nations is not hypocritical in admitting that not a single country has achieved gender equality. There are a gazillion challenges that have yet to be changed.

“Women and girls continue to be undervalued; they work more and earn less and have fewer choices, and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces,” the UN Women website avers.

The UN organization adds that whatever the women achieved to improve their fates, there has been a “significant threat of rollback,” across the world.

Here, we still think that women get raped because of how they dress. A police station even published such assertion on its Facebook page. Although we have the anti-bastos act enacted, it doesn’t have teeth, to say the least, and opaque, at best.

Until we realize the simple truth that women hold half of the world, we will always be thinking that women are second class citizens of the world. We have not progressed as a species because we keep on depriving our female counterparts of their rightful place in development. Pfft.