Cebu City Hall must prove its employees deserve P30K bonus

Cebu City Hall has to show that each of its employees deserved the P30,000 bonus given to them last year. The Commission of Audit is requiring performance appraisal reports to support the grant of the bonus.
CDN FILE PHOTO

WHAT exactly did Cebu City Hall employees do to deserve a P30,000 across-the-board bonus in December last year?

The Commission on Audit Central Visayas (COA 7) wants the Cebu City government to answer this through the submission of individual accomplishment reports and appraisals or evaluation reports or contributions of each of City Halls employees in order to justify the grant of the bonus.

State auditors said this is required under Civil Service Commission (CSC) Memorandum Circular No. 1 series of 2001 as well as the guidelines covering City Hall’s Program on Awards and Incentives for Service Excellence (PRAISE) Committee.

“Cash incentive granted should have been supported with individual appraisal or evaluation reports assessing the performance and conduct of each employee by means of the agency PRAISE Committee’s established system of incentives and awards to recognize and motivate employees for their performance and conduct,” the COA said in its Annual Audit Report of the city’s financial transactions.

Quoting the CSC memorandum, state auditors said there should be sets of criteria, performance indicators and procedures in evaluating employees as bases of awards and recognition.

A total of P129 million for the bonus of City Hall officials and regular and casual employees was suspended in audit by the COA.

Around 4,800 employees received the bonus.

Late last year, Cebu City Hall made headlines when it included a proposal for the across-the-board bonus in its approved Supplemental Budget (SB) 2.
The P30,000 bonus was said to be the biggest bonus granted by the city government.

According to a resolution of the PRAISE Committee, the basis for granting the bonus to all employees of the city government was the award garnered by the city as the third most competitive highly urbanized city in the country by the National Competitiveness Council in Manila in July, 2015.

Back then, some city councilors abstained from voting for the passage of the SB2 granting the bonus, saying the amount was too big. Some of them opted to receive only P10,000 as bonus instead.

The COA said though that this justification wasn’t enough and required the city government to submit the individual assessment reports of each employee in order to fully justify the grant of the bonus.