A P206 million supplemental budget is being pushed by City Hall, in large part to cover a proposed P30 thousand cash bonus for all of its 5,000 plus employees and officials. That a funding source for the supplemental budget has reportedly been found is expected to make the City Council approve the proposal, unlike its refusal to even tackle an earlier supplemental budget that would have used proceeds from the sale of SRP lots as funding source.
In either case, politics takes precedence over good sense in the city council. In the first supplemental budget, the majority in the council, which takes its orders from its party head who apparently believes the city owes him for the SRP, has had no qualms in repeatedly holding hostage funding for the delivery of basic services.
In the second supplemental budget, the majority will likely allow the funding as it will please all employees, given the amount of bonuses contained therein. Happy employees will be grateful employees and can be counted upon to remember from whose order approval by the majority was given. Makes perfect political sense to those driven by nothing else but selfish interests.
But while City Hall employees and officials may be assured of a happy Christmas with their P30 thousand bonus, if approved as expected, the same may not be said by many of the rest of the Cebuanos from whose taxes the bonus will be sourced. Many of these taxpayers will not even get to enjoy a fraction of that bonus for their own Christmas.
It is a sad reality in Philippine life that those who toil to provide the taxes from which government employees get to have their merry Christmas will not be able to be as blessed themselves. And to add insult to this injurious injustice, many, if not most, of these recipients of the bonus in government do not even actually deserve the incentive.
Government is almost always lousy in its performance and in the delivery of basic services. It does not do justice to the hard-earned taxes that are collected from citizens to fuel its operations. And yet government still sees a crying need to gift itself with incentives for a performance that leaves much to be desired as well as the non-delivery of services.
Just take the two supplemental budgets. The first, meant to underwrite the delivery of basic services, is not being given, for reasons of the ugliest political kind. Then comes the second, intended to cover the bonuses, and it will likely be approved promptly, as a thank you for lousy performance and non-delivery of services. So, citizen Cebuano, if you think you have been wronged and taken advantage of, avenge yourself. Think May 2016.