GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/21 December) – Employees of the provincial government of South Cotabato are set to receive an additional bonus of P20,000 this month as productivity enhancement incentive.
South Cotabato Gov. Arthur Pingoy Jr. said the incentive, which is P10,000 more than their counterparts in national government agencies are getting, represents the accumulated savings of the local government from its budget for this year.
He said the P20,000 additional bonus will only be given to regular employees of the provincial government but noted that the contractual or job-order workers will also be getting a reasonable cash gift.
Pingoy noted that the actual amount appropriated for the regular employees’ incentive was more than P20,000 but the local government slashed a portion of it to accommodate the contractual and job-order workers.
“In the spirit of Christmas, we deemed it appropriate to share our cash gift with the non-regular workers since they’ve been also working hard just like the rest of us,” the governor said in a statement from the South Cotabato Information Office.
He said the incentive will be released before December 23, in time for the local government’s Christmas party.
Last year, the provincial government granted P21,000 as extra cash gift for all its 955 regular employees but only P18,000 was released as it allotted the slashed P3,000 for the incentives of the more than 600 contractual and job-order workers.
Among those who benefited from such scheme were the local government-paid teachers, who received a cash gift of P5,000 each.
The South Cotabato provincial board earlier granted authority to Pingoy to augment the allocation for the employees’ incentive with the local government’s savings.
Under board Resolution 332, it authorized the governor and/or the vice governor to augment with the savings from any item, especially in the personal services, in the approved annual budget for the payment of the extra cash gift of provincial officials and employees.
It also mandated all provincial government offices to hasten the submission of its payroll and other payments for this month to facilitate the release of the incentive. (Allen V. Estabillo/MindaNews)
