COA on city hall’s hiring of JO workers: ‘Waste of money’

CEBU, Philippines —  The Commission on Audit (COA) has questioned the hiring of “so many” job order (JO) employees at the Cebu City Hall and considered this practice a “wasteful expenditure” and may lead to potential “bureaucratic inefficiency.”

In the latest COA Annual Audit report, the hiring of 4,091 Job Order (JO) workers is about 45 percent of the city’s total workforce, in which P602,247,468.96 was allocated for their wages in 2022.

As of June 30, 2023, the city government has 3,510 job orders left.

Mayor Michael Rama said there will be another set of evaluation for the city government's rightsizing, which would mean further trimming the city’s workforce.

Based on the state auditor’s observation, it appears that the city has a “weak internal control in the recruitment, repetitive hiring of JOs, job mismatch, overlapping/redundancy, and unclear/ unverified accomplishments resulting in potential bureaucratic inefficiency and wasteful government expenditure.”

For the weak internal recruitment control, the COA said there should be an intervention by the city’s Human Resource Department (HRD) or an independent screening committee to ensure that the job order personnel are capable of performing the job.

“History and experience have told us that there exists various job mismatch in the LGUs because employees are hired, especially the non-regular/permanent ones like the JO personnel mostly based on political considerations, partisanship, or personal favoritism. Thus, to spare the city from this perception, it must show that it seriously observes certain parameters aimed to ensure a fair and competitive hiring process, thereby allowing the city to get on board only competent and hardworking job order personnel.”

As defined by the Joint Circular No. 2 s. 2020 of COA and DBM dated October 20, 2020, job orders refer to a piece work (pakyaw) or intermittent or emergency jobs or for just a short duration and for a specific piece of work.

Tenured JO employees

However, COA revealed that 43 percent of the 4,091 JO personnel had been in the same job for three years now.

“This continued and repetitive hiring indicates that these job orders were not for a short period of time, much less for a specific piece of work,” read the COA report.

JOs were hired to perform the functions of unfilled plantilla positions when JO workers shall only be limited to emergency or intermittent work.

The audit team added that accomplishment reports of some JO workers were “not quantified, generic, and iterative, or similar for some JOs, while some appeared to be non-commensurate to the number of working hours paid by the government indicating absence of verification and validation.”

Accordingly, it gives the impression that the reported accomplishments were not properly checked/ reviewed and verified by the supervisor, thus encouraging laziness and untruthful reporting, the COA said.

With all these observations, the audit team had recommended that Rama direct the HRDMO “to formulate a uniform policy and procedures in the engagement of JO workers to ensure that the hiring process is free from bias and has a consistent basis for assigning wage rates to improve the existing system.”

Aside from that, a thorough assessment, and evaluation of the existing manpower complement to remove excessive and unnecessary JO workers who are performing redundant functions with other workers and regular plantilla personnel should also be done, while vacant plantilla positions should be filled up to minimize the hiring of JO workers.

In an undated reply, the city said these JOs were hired since the outbreak of the pandemic to render full assistance and mobilize the necessary resources to undertake.

The city said their services are still needed until this time critical, urgent, and appropriate response and measures in a timely manner.

The city government, however, also said they are already working to improve the hiring process of the JO personnel and formulate policies, procedures, and improve the existing control over the hiring of JOs while considering the audit recommendations to improve the system in hiring JO workers.

The HRDMO has also included in their 2023 budget the orientation for all the hired JOs to be informed of the policies of the CCG which they are bound to follow. — GAN (FREEMAN)