EDITORIAL - The sad and sorry plight of JOs

It is bad enough that this government robs job order workers their dignity by refusing to recognize any employer-employee relationship with them, it is worse when it refuses to pay such workers for months on end simply because it has politically-related questions about their hiring. The circumstances of their hiring is one thing. The pay for the work they do is another.

It is true that many, if not most, of job order workers are political hires. It is also true that some JOs have no real work to do and simply collect their salaries every payday, that is, if their pay does not get caught in the political tugs-of-war that happen every now and then, as is happening right now in Talisay.

But shorn of any political color, the other side of the story is that JOs actually make up the backbone of many of the public services that government performs daily.

Health and sanitation services alone would grind to a halt if there are no JOs. Barangay health workers -- from duly licensed nurses to midwives are all JOs, who are paid less than the minimum wage by the very government that is supposed to protect the welfare of all its citizens, regardless of their social standing or employment status.

There are many departments and agencies of government that cannot do even half of the work they are supposed to do had it not been for the convenient existence of job order workers. The Department of Health, for instance, embarks every now and then on massive, nationwide health initiatives without having enough personnel to do the job.

And yet the Department of Health always succeeds and meets its targets despite its manpower handicaps because of one thing -- the presence of JOs. The DOH, in its extensive drives such as Ligtas Tigdas, had to rely to hundreds of barangay health workers, almost all of them JOs, to reach the remotest villages or penetrate the most densely populated communities to make sure the job is done.

And yet it is a thankless jobs for JOs. When all the back-slapping congratulations come, it is always the officials and other bigwigs who take the credit. The JOs are not given the slightest thanks. And all because they do not have, in the eyes of their own government, an employer-employee relationship. And so the sad and sorry saga of an exploited, abused and demeaned sector of society goes on, largely unnoticed except when some extraneous issue about their existence crops up.

In Talisay City, for instance, the matter of JOs has cropped up again because the mayor is accused by his critics of hiring relatives and paying these relatives higher than other JOs. As a result, the salaries of some JOS caught in the crossfire have been compromised. The controversy involves several issues that should be taken up separately. But JOs need to be paid for work rendered regardless of the prevailing political circumstances. To do otherwise is cruel, inhuman.