The Cebu City Office for Substance Abuse Prevention is conducting suprise drug test in the offices and departments of the city hall as well as barangays. | Photo Courtesy of Jonah John Rodriguez, head of COSAP
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City Legal Office (CLO) said employees who were found positive to the recent drug tests conducted by the City Office for Substance Abuse Prevention (COSAP) could not be rehired by the city government even if they would voluntarily resign before the CLO could investigate them.
City Legal Officer Rey Gealon wrote to Mayor Edgardo Labella with concerns that some drug positive employees, who resigned even before the results of their test arrived, thereby avoiding probe from the CLO, were successfully rehired by the Human Resource Department Office (HRDO).
Gealon said that because these employees were not exactly “terminated” because of proving positive to drugs, the HRDO did not have records of their drug test results.
The resigned employees managed to be rehired without the results of their previous drug test hampering their hiring.
Read more: Labella concerned with number of city hall employees who tested positive in drug test
With this, Gealon encouraged all department and office heads to not accept the resignation of drug-positive employees and the names must be forwarded to Mayor Labella. The mayor should be the one to accept the resignation.
In this way, the drug positive employees and the drug test results would be recorded. These would also appear in the city records so rehiring drug-positive employees would be avoided.
“Be that as it may, those that resigned peremptorily must not be accepted by office heads. Instead, they must be forwarded to the Office of the Mayor through the HRDO. Besides, the investigation was conducted and their termination from employment was imminent,” said Gealon.
Gealon said terminated or even resigned drug-positive employees could not be rehired by the city government unless they present proof of completing rehabilitation.
In previous statements, Labella said that under his administration, he would cleanse the city hall from drug users and would immediately terminate employees who prove positive to the drug test. |dbs