More than 50 staff of ARMM sacked

COTABATO CITY – More than 50 employees of line agencies in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, some of them directorate staffers, have been discharged from the service for absenteeism, the ARMM’s regional lawyer said.

The region’s solicitor-general, Bai Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, said dozens more are undergoing investigation for similar offenses and for being “detached” from the ongoings of their respective offices.

Guiani-Sayadi said ARMM Gov.Datu Zaldy Ampatuan started firing the erring personnel of different line agencies under the region’s executive department last week as part of his administration’s effort to professionalize the regional bureaucracy.

“This is in line with the governor’s effort of reinventing the regional bureaucracy into a pro-community, pro-poor outfit, totally free from absentee employees,” Guiani-Sayadi said.

Guiani-Sayadi earlier led a task force, which Ampatuan organized, that neutralized a big, long-time syndicate behind the listing of thousands of non-existing teachers in the payrolls of the Department of Education in the ARMM, and whose operation started more than a decade before the governor was elected to office in 2005.

The interim task force also delisted more than 40 “non-existent” schools in the ARMM, which were used by past education officials as “conduits” for releases of maintenance and operation grants from the Department of Budget and Management.

Guiani-Sayadi said one of those Ampatuan fired just days ago was a ranking official of the ARMM’s Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), who was found out to be habitually absent from office by an inter-agency surveillance group.

“The dismissal from the service of these people was done according to legal procedures,” Guiani-Sayadi said.

Ranking members of Ampatuan’s cabinet said the dismissal “en-masse” of the absentee personnel was part of a total overhaul of the regional workforce to maximize the efficiency of the ARMM government in preparation for the re-election bid of the 40-year-old governor.

Ampatuan, the youngest of all regional governors that took turns managing the ARMM since its creation in 1990, is also the regional chairman for the autonomous region of the administration’s Lakas-Christian, Muslim Democrats party.

“There is reason for the ARMM governor to aspire for a second term. All of the 113 mayors and six provincial governors in the region, have recently signed separate manifestos urging him to run for a second term,” said retired Air Force Col. Antonio Mariano, chief of the region’s National Housing Authority.

Among those that have unanimously prodded Ampatuan to seek a second term if regional elections are held in August this year are the 45 barangay chairmen of the vote-rich Lamitan City in Basilan, led by Mayor Roderick Furigay.

The Ampatuan administration boasts of dozens of foreign and locally-funded socio-economic projects, among them the extensive community development thrusts of the ARMM Social Fund Project (ASFP), which is bankrolled both by the World Bank and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.