President Carlos Polistico Garcia’s executive order on fixing office hours during the hot season

Carlos P. Garcia, the first and only Boholano president (vice president and successor of President Magsaysay who died in a plane crash on March 17, 1957 in the mountains of Gaas, Balamban) married a Cebuana, Leonila Dimataga (daughter of Bartolome Mangubat Dimataga, municipal president of Opon, Cebu. Her brother, Mariano, became the last municipal mayor of Opon and the first city mayor of Lapu-Lapu (converted into a city on June 17, 1961 by virtue of Republic Act 3134).

To address the challenge of the hotness of the climate, President Garcia issued an executive order fixing government’s office hours:

EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 292

FIXING OFFICE HOURS DURING

THE HOT SEASON

Pursuant to the provisions of section 564 of the Revised Administrative Code, as amended by Republic Act No. 1880, the office hours from Monday to Friday of all departments, bureaus, offices, agencies, and instrumentalities of the Government, including the provincial, city, and municipal governments and all corporations owned or controlled by the Government, during the period from April 1 to June 15, 1958, both dates inclusive, shall be from seven-thirty o’clock in the morning to twelve-thirty o’clock in the afternoon. The provisions of this Order shall not apply to the offices in the City of Baguio, whether national, provincial, or municipal.

This Order shall not oblige the Head of any department, bureau, or office to reduce as herein provided the office hours in his department, bureau, of office, but leaves the same to his discretion subject to the requirements of the service and provided that the usual volume of work is not diminished by the reduction of office hours.

Done in the City of Manila, this 26th day of March, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and fifty-eight, and of the Independence of the Philippines, the twelfth.

(Sgd.) CARLOS P. GARCIA

President of the Philippines

By the President:

(Sgd.) JUAN C. PAJO

Executive Secretary

Juan C. Pajo was a lawyer (admitted to the Bar on December 17, 1929) and elected Bohol governor on January 1, 1952 and reelected in 1955. He was appointed by President Garcia as his executive secretary when he became president on March 18, 1957.