Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella assures nurses that their delayed salaries would be released soon. | CDN Digital file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The delayed salaries of the 98 job-order nurses of the Cebu City Quarantine Center (CCQC), who have been working without pay for four months now, may be released by May 11, 2021.
Mayor Edgardo Labella said that the payroll would be released soon as he had directed the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) to release the nurses’ salary as soon as possible.
Labella said that any delay in their salary was not something tolerable because the nurses were working hard for the city.
Cebu City Administrator, Lawyer Floro Casas, Jr., said in a phone conference that the documents pertaining to the payroll of the nurses were already with the CTO as of May 7, 2021.
READ: CCMC, CCQC nurses to get delayed 4 months’ salary by 1st week of May
The payroll took time to be released because there was still a process to go through prior to the release of the salaries, but Casas assured that the nurses would get their pay.
“Mga Tuesday pa gyod next week marelease ang ilahang sweldo kay naa na gud sa Accounting karon. Naa lay mga ginagmay nga findings nga icomply karon. Gitagaan na ta og committment sa City Treasurer nga hatagan sila (nurses) sa priority sa disbursement,” said Casas.
(Their salaries will be released on Tuesday next week because these are still in Accounting now. There are a few findings that needed to be complied with. The City Treasurer have already given their commitment to give the disbursement of the salaries of the nurses priority.)
It can be remembered that the reason why the salaries were delayed was because they were hired after the 2021 annual budget had been approved and reallocation of the disaster funds to pay for their salaries had to go through the City Council.
The city government has fast-tracked the release of the payroll since the last week of April 2021 with the city administrator apologizing for the delay.
Nurses are still waiting for their January to March salaries, constantly working without pay for five months now.
Casas said he had instructed the administrators of the CCQC and the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) to start processing the April payroll as well so that the nurses could receive their pay shortly after.
He said he understood that JOs had to go through a more tedious process in their payrolls as compared to casual and regular employees due to the many documents they would need to comply.
However, if the administrator works hard to follow-up the documents and submit these on time, the payroll will not be delayed too long.
With this, he encouraged all administrators and JOs to cooperate to complete all requirements for the payroll as soon as the month ends.
For the part of the city government, he said they were realigning budgets to ensure that funds would be prepared for the salaries of these medical workers.
Casas said they were targeting that the payrolls could be released on a monthly basis.
/dbs
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