Labella to City Hall employees: Take drug tests

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella is making sure that his administration will maintain a drug free workplace as he orders regular and job order (JO) employees of city hall to undergo a drug test today, July 1.

Labella said he ordered a drug test for all employees including heads and executives and encouraged even elected officials to undergo the test.

“I will volunteer for a drug test. I will be the first to undergo it,” said Labella.

The mayor said that one of the requirements to being an employee of the City Hall would be to be physically fit. 

He said that people who would be using illegal drugs would not be fit to work under any government office.

The drug tests were among the first orders of Labella on his first day of office. Earlier he also ordered a cleanup of the city’s streets and plans for declogging the city’s waterways to prevent floods.

Read more: Cleaning city’s streets, declogging city’s waterways top Labella’s to do list

Aside from that he also reminded all employees and elected officials that they should not forget that they were public officials, who would need to be accountable for their actions.

He told them to always uphold integrity and honesty in serving his administration.

“I remind all employees old and new that corruption is a no in the city government. If they get caught engaging in corrupt practices, they will really be out of the service,” said Labella.

He also assured that all job order employees from the past administration would undergo an evaluation on whether they could continue to stay in City Hall.

Labella said that he did not have the numbers yet of who would stay or not but he assured that it would not be as drastic as the former administration’s when 3,000 JO workers were ordered relieved.

He said that as long as the JOs would have a good evaluation record then they could retain their jobs./dbs