COA: No legal basis for signing bonus of Cebu Capitol workers

CEBU — The disbursement of the P17-million signing bonus by former governor Pablo Garcia under the 2003 collective negotiation agreement (CNA) between the provincial government and the Capitol employees had no legal basis.

This was the finding of the Commission on Audit (COA) in its post-audit observation report on the grant of the P12,000 signing bonus to each of the more than 2,000 regular, casual, contractual and job order employees, including elective officials, of the provincial government.

As such, COA requested Gov. Gwen Garcia, the former governor’s daughter, to file her comment or reply to the matter within 15 days from receipt of the report.

Audit team leader Nancy Aparri said in her memorandum that the granting of the signing bonus was illegal, citing a Supreme Court ruling (COA vs. Social Security System case on July 11, 2002) that a signing bonus is a form of additional compensation prohibited under the Constitution.

Aparri said a copy of the CNA was not submitted to COA, hence, they could not determine if savings were generated after the agreement was signed.

She said the agreement must have included provisions on cost-cutting measures and systems improvement to be undertaken by both the provincial government and the Capitol employees’ union.

The law further allows only 50 percent of the savings — generated after the CNA signing — for CNA incentive, which only the rank-and-file are entitled to.

Because of the COA observation, provincial officials are debating whether the CNA incentive should be disbursed to Capitol employees now or not at all.

Gwen has vetoed a provincial board resolution asking her to release the CNA incentive after the Department of Budget and Management ruled that she cannot submit a supplemental budget allocating the bonus without the approval of the 2004 annual budget. — Freeman News Service