ENGINEERS' PROMOTION: Complaints upset selection board

CEBU, Philippines - Personnel Selection Board Presiding Office Eugene Elizalde is disappointed over complaints on alleged irregularity in the promotion of city engineers.

Elizalde denied that the PSB placed some city engineers in floating status. He said the board does not have the power to do it.

“The role of the PSB is to fairly rank the applicants based on the interviews and the documents they submitted. The mayor still has the final approval,” Elizalde said.

Last week, a text message circulated among reporters that blamed PSB for putting the city engineers on floating status, allegedly the PSB’s way to justify the promotion of lowly engineers to higher ranks.

“An outsider will soon be promoted to assistant city engineer, and to justify it, engineers from the ranks are placed on floating status,” the text message also reads.

The text message also reached Mayor Michael Rama and Acting City Engineer Kenneth Enriquez.

“Cebu City Engineering Office is now demoralized (badly) because qualified persons are being persecuted and placed on floating status to justify the act of the head of the Personnel Selection Board and the city engineer to promote lowly engineers to higher ranks,” the text message reads.

Elizalde denied that the PSB accommodated an outsider for the Assistant City Engineer position because, as far as he knows, all the engineers they interviewed were from the Department of Engineering and Public Works.

“All the applicants were from the engineering department, there was no new comer. I wonder where they picked up that information,” Elizalde said.

He said it is also unfair to call the applicants ‘lowly engineers’ because the fact that they were interviewed means they received initial endorsement, thus, they are qualified.

“Everybody is qualified. In the first place, they will not be interviewed if they are not,” Elizalde said.

He assured that the PSB was fair in ranking all the applicants that sought promotion and they scored the applicants based on the interview and the documents submitted.

There are five permanent members of the PSB, including Elizalde, Human Resource and Development Office Veronica Morelos, City Registrar Evangeline Abatayo and Councilors Lea Japson and Roberto Cabarrubias. The sixth member is the concerned department head.

“We do not even share each other’s results. That’s how fair we are, we do not even consult each other. At the end of interview, the scores will be tallied by the secretariat then it will be submitted to the mayor for approval. So there is no way the PSB can put them to floating status,” Elizalde said.

Earlier, Rama warned the complainant(s) of over-complaining, saying that instead of getting a promotion, they might just lose the same. – Jessica Ann R. Pareja/JMO (THE FREEMAN)