CSC overturns Vi’s order

LIPA CITY — The Civil Service Commission (CSC) has ordered Lipa Mayor Vilma Santos to reinstate nine regular city employees to their former posts, ruling that their transfer to a newly created agency was illegal.

In a 13-page order, Rebecca Fernandez, the CSC’s Region 4 director, said the transfer of the nine employees — which turned out to be a virtual demotion — was out of line and could even be considered politically motivated as the employees have alleged.

The nine were city personnel officer Ronald de Castro, farm supervisor Hernando Cator, community development officer Gerardo Espeso, administrative officer Edgardo Latina, assistant community affairs officer Ricardo Libon, market inspector Luisito Mayo, social welfare officer Meynard Melo, public information officer Rolando Sarmiento and a certain Ronald Politico.

Santos "temporarily relieved" them in her first administrative order this year and placed them in a "special study committee" with vague responsibilities.

The nine were made to occupy an abandoned area within the city engineering compound without tables, chairs, office equipment and supplies.

De Castro, the most senior in the group, said their transfer was nothing but a political move of Santos since they have been identified with her predecessor, former mayor Ruben Umali.

He alleged that Santos, wife of Sen. Ralph Recto, subjected them to verbal harassment to force them to resign.

Santos strongly denied the accusation.

"This is a remark sourced from minds fertile with suspicion and antagonism against my administration," she said in a statement.

She said the nine employees "had refused to cooperate, conform and even subvert" to her administration’s programs.

She said the special study committee was supposed to need people who "have been in the service long enough to know the fine points of the bureaucracy."

The mayor justified her decision to reassign the nine employees by citing the 1997 Revised Administrative Code which allows such a move, provided it does not result in reduction of rank, status or salary of the affected employees.

"The complaint against me is tainted with malice, prejudice and political undertones and is devoid of merit," she said.

The CSC, however, said it found the complaint against the mayor valid since she had isolated the nine employees and deprived them of a workplace.

The commission added that Santos denied their request for office equipment, thus preventing them from performing their new tasks.