Budget woes hit Valenzuela City Hall

Some 3,000 daily wage earners at Valenzuela City Hall are up in arms as they face the prospect of a bleak Christmas this year. They also stand to lose their jobs by yearend.

This developed after the city council chose to slash by almost half the city budget after allegedly failing to get certain unnamed concessions from the Mayor’s Office.

With a severely cut budget, the city government will be hard put to finance its operations and compromise the delivery of even the most basic of services to the people, Valenzuela City Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian said.

Yesterday, affected workers marched in protest at City Hall, the second in as many weeks, urging the city council to reconsider and approve the P1.2-million budget proposed by the executive.

The opposition-dominated city council earlier voted to slash the proposed budget to a mere P730 million.

Lawyer Annie Marquez, city administrator, told The STAR the City Treasurer’s Office has certified that the P500-million slashed from the proposal can be collected. She said there is no reason for the city council to disapprove the original budget.

The city council’s apparent stubbornness will hurt not only the "small ones" at the City Hall but eventually the very people they are mandated to serve, the mayor added.

The mayor said the city’s street cleaners, traffic enforcers, garbage collectors, flood gatekeepers, volunteer workers, generally subsisting on a P100 daily allowance for their backbreaking work, will be the worst hit. He said the department for the delivery of basic services were given a zero budget.

"We don’t worry about Christmas. We are sure they will get by. What is worrisome is the next year. We don’t know what will happen if this tug-of-war drags on," Marquez said.

An embittered worker from the Waste Management Office cried out: "Sila (councilors) na lang kaya ang gumawa ng trabaho namin."

The mayor chided the city lawmakers for allegedly putting their personal interests over that of the people who put them in the city council. He added that despite this, he continues to look for the best options to settle the issue and convince the opposition to finally approve the originally proposed budget.

"I continue to appeal to the council’s sense of fairness and reason not to make the budget a negotiating factor to get what they want to the detriment of the public," said Gatchalian. – With Pete Laude