“Honeymoon is over” at Cebu City Hall

CEBU, Philippines — The “honeymoon period” between acting Cebu City Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia and City Hall employees is over.

Garcia said he will now start evaluating the performance of the employees to continue the downsizing program started by preventively suspended Mayor Michael Rama.

The acting mayor announced the performance evaluation of personnel during the flag raising ceremony at the City Hall grounds on Monday, August 12. He ordered the Human Resource and Development Office (HRDO) to be on top of the evaluation of all the employees, including Job Orders (JO), casual, and Plantilla positions.

Garcia was blunt in telling the employees that the result of the assessment will serve as his basis in deciding who will remain in the city government.

Aside from the HRDO, Garcia said he will also be forming his own evaluation committee.  The downsizing or rightsizing program was started by Rama to trim down the city hall employees to 3,000 in 2025.

“Humana man ang honeymoon period, May, June, July, August, September, so after the next three months, we will make an evaluation,” said Garcia.

“And I intend to pursue katong gi sugdan ni Mayor Mike katong sa atong downsizing or rightsizing nga gitawag, so at the end of September down to October this year, we will already know kinsa atong ipang renew or kung kinsay dili ipang renew,” he added.

Garcia revealed that this decision stemmed from his rounds in Cebu City where he accordingly witnessed some employees not performing according to their job descriptions. He also noticed that some employees are doing redundant functions.

“Naa say uban nga gigamit sa ubang purpose. I have to make an honest to goodness evaluation regarding this matter and I want to make sure nga ang atong mahabilin diri , gamit kaayo nga mga empleyado,” said Garcia.

Garcia admitted that he has been “hearing things” on the overall performance of the city hall employees. He, however, refused to divulge things further unless he formed his own evaluation team whose members are yet to be named.

Currently, Garcia said they are in the process of filling up the 2,000 plantilla positions that were left vacant. This is also after the Commission on Audit (COA) flagged the 2,311 plantilla positions that were left vacant, which amounts to P2.192 billion in unutilized funds.

The same report stated that as of December 31, 2023, the city had approved a total of 3,645 plantilla positions, yet only 1,334, or 36.6 percent were filled.

The evaluation team will be formed within the week while the assessment will begin next week. They will be making rounds from one department to another to check on their job descriptions and functions.

According to Garcia, he would want to continue the rightsizing program saying that it was the direction for city hall employees. Currently, the Cebu City Hall has 1, 321 permanent employees and 2,776 casual workers.— (FREEMAN)