Villar, Recto hit govt failure to give full Xmas bonus

An opposition senator on Thursday urged the Arroyo administration to shoulder the balance of P3,000 – out of the P10,000 year-end “performance bonus" – that it owed to employees of agencies that had no internal savings. Senator Manuel Villar Jr. said Malacañang should “dig into its deep pocket of savings" so it can settle its Christmas-time obligations to state workers. There are 1.1 million national government workers. Many agencies have no savings Under Malacañang guidelines on the P10,000 year-end bonus, P7,000 will be shouldered by the national government, while P3,000 will be sourced from agency savings. However, many agencies like the Department of Education complained that they have no savings to tap into, as they have spent all their allocations based on a tight expenditure program which left no room for surplus. “Many of our fellow employees are caught in a bureaucratic ping-pong," Villar said in a press statement, adding that the finger-pointing between Malacañang and the affected agencies can be ended if the Palace will just shoulder the P3,000. Villar added that according to the 2008 National Expenditure Program Financing, the national government in fact posted a savings of P140 billion for that year. The senator also cited monthly reports of the Finance department showing gross under-spending on the part of the government. “Actual spending has always been below authorized levels," he said. Recto: drop the 70-30 formula For his part, former socioeconomic planning secretary Ralph Recto said the government should ditch the 70-30 formula in the Christmas bonus and stick to the 'one rate' to avoid delay and confusion. "The problem with this scheme is that it is grossly unfair to employees of agencies with no savings to tap for their bonuses," he said in a press statement. "If the bonus hinges on savings, then it penalizes agencies that had better absorptive capacity of their funds, those who are not holding back on projects and services. After all, agencies have been told to fully utilize their allocations or lose them," the former senator added. He said that by making bonuses dependent on savings, "are we not in fact encouraging the hoarding of allocations because the heads of these agencies will then be setting aside such sums to meet the Christmas bonus?" Recto said the government is better off by programming in advance a fixed amount for additional bonus so it will not be dependent on the so-called generosity of the one who seats in Malacañang. – Amita O. Legaspi/JV, GMANews.TV