Cebu City Hall rightsizing: Abolition of ‘redundant’ offices proposed

CEBU, Philippines — Cebu City Human Resources Development Office (HRDO) Head Henry Tomalacabcad yesterday said his office will propose the elimination of offices or attached offices with redundant functions, as part of the reimplementation of the rightsizing program that aims to trim down the number of employees

This came two Mondays after acting Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia announced that the “honeymoon period is over” and that a massive evaluation among employees would be done in September.

Contracts of City Hall casual and job order employees would expire by the end of September 2024.

Tomalacabcad said they have already identified the members of the Technical Working Group (TWG) that would evaluate the respective status of the employees, to determine who would be those whose contracts would be renewed or not.

The TWG comprises the Internal Audit Service Office (IASO), City Budget Office, Office of the Mayor, and Cebu City Administrator’s Office, while the HRDO will be the lead office. Tomalabcad said they are yet to meet to begin the evaluation.

Among the primary criteria in the evaluation is the “redundancy” of the job functions of the employees and offices.

Tomalabcad said that at the Office of the Mayor alone, there are at least 30 attached offices. These offices would not be subjected to the same assessment and evaluation.

“Ang uban ana pare-pareha ang trabaho,” he said.

He also mentioned the Cebu City Environmental and Natural Resources Office, whose functions are about environmental concerns, which is also the mandate of the Cebu Environmental Sanitation and Enforcement Team, the Coastline Management Board (CMB), and the Task Force Gubat sa Baha.

“So why not, usahon nalang nato na? Para ang mga tawo dili na magdaghan, kay there are functions kaya sa usa ka tawo pero duha ang nagtrabaho karon,” Tomalabcad said.

He, however, assured that abolishing an attached office would undergo a thorough evaluation by the TWG.  In particular, the IASO would determine the ideal number of employees in each office.

Tumalabcad also said they would also study the flow of service in each office and check the services being rendered, to maximize efficiency.

“Kung naay kailangan i-abolish, i-abolish nato. Kung naay kinahanglan i-merge, i-merge,” he said.

He said, though, that it would be up to Garcia to approve his proposal, as abolishing an office requires an approved City Ordinance.

He cited as example the 2022 abolition of the Registry of Deeds last 2022 through an ordinance filed by City Councilor Jocelyn Pesquera, who argued that it should be dissolved since its functions are no longer lodged under the City Government but rare already with the Cebu Provincial Government.

Pesquera, for her part, said that since creating an office requires an ordinance, abolishing it or merging it with another office should also require one.

She, however, said that they have to take into consideration the employees that would be affected, especially the regular ones.

“Ang office i-abolish, but kung naa pa ang position, the position will remain until such time it will be vacated,” the councilor said.

She said that aside from waiting for the retirement of the regular employees of the abolished office, the employees could do a lateral transfer to another office, occupying the same position and doing the same functions, as long as this would not result in salary reduction and loss of benefits.

Also, Tomalabcad said the City Government still needs to fill up 2,000 vacant regular posts, as recommended by the Commission on Audit (COA). He said they are also opening the positions to current casual and job order (JO) employees

With this, he said, they would no longer be hiring for casual and JO positions.

When the rightsizing program was first introduced by Mayor Michael Rama, who is currently serving a six-month preventive suspension, its objective was to trim the number of employees to 3,000 by 2025.

He said the current implementation Acting Mayor Garcia ordered no longer mandates a required number of employees but rather for the City to have regular positions filled up, preferably by existing casual or JO employees.

“Kinahanlang nato nga right number of employees for a particular function, otherwise, nagkalas ta og resources. So kini maka-save gyud ta ani. We are spending billions para lang sa personal services ba,” said Tumalabcad.

He said that for this year, in particular, the city’s annual budget, identified P1.6 billion for “personal services.

He said the rightsizing program would translate to a savings of more than P100 million. — (FREEMAN)