Workers get pay as Rama insists on 2016 budget

THREE days after she was supposed to get her salary, 24-year-old casual employee Lykka Cabaral was relieved to hear the news that they will be paid today.

“Malipayon gyud ko kay at least karon ni-assure na sila. Taod-taod na sad baya nga wa pa mi kadawat sa among sweldo. Naghugot gyud kos akong gastuan (I’m very happy, at least they’re already assuring us. It’s been a while that we haven’t received our salaries. I had to to limit my expenses),” said Cabral, a working student taking up Business Administration.

City Treasurer Diwa Cuevas confirmed that they already processed the payroll for all regular and casual employees.

“By Friday (today), they will already get their salaries,” she said.

But she cannot confirm if they are basing the release of the salary on the 2016 annual budget or the reenacted budget from last year. She said it will be revealed soon.

The City Council asked the executive department to use a reenacted budget from 2015 while they have yet to submit a revised annual budget back to them.

This is in compliance to the opinion and recommendation of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) 7 declaring the P6.4 billion annual budget this year as inoperative in its entirety for failing to include the loan amortization for the South Road Properties (SRP).

But Mayor Michael Rama insisted that the DBM should still allow the city to use its 2016 budget.

In fact, Rama sent a letter to DBM Regional Director Carmela Fernan earlier this week in which he explained the non-inclusion of the loan amortization in the annual budget.

In his letter, the mayor said last year’s Supplemental Budget 1 (SB1) which included the proposed prepayment of the SRP loan, was still pending when the executive submitted its proposed annual budget last October.

“Furthermore, the budgetary requirement for the payment of loans/contractual obligations for the annual budget was rendered academic in this instance when the Land Bank of the Philippines granted the City of Cebu a reprieve until 20 August 2016 within which to pay the loan amortization,” he said in his letter.

He also said the executive submitted another SB1 for 2016 including the SRP loan prepayment again to prove that the city is honoring its contractual obligation.