COSAP gets complaint for unpaid honorarium

An unknown caller complained to the 8888 Citizens' Complaint Hotline under the Office of the President over the alleged unreleased honoraria of barangay tanods in Cebu City from September 2017 to January 2018.

“Ang reklamo ko kasi yung mga barangay tanod dito sa Cebu City dahil hindi sila nabigyan ng honorarium mag-four months na simula noong September 2017 to January 2018. Hindi nagbibigay si Mayor (Tomas) Osmeña,” reads the document from the 8888 Citizens' Complaint Hotline.

The document was endorsed to Cebu City's hotline focal person Emma Villarete.

Every month, the city government is giving P4,000 honoraria each to 1,600 tanods in the 80 barangays.

Villarete forwarded the complaint to Garry Lao, executive assistant III of Osmeña, who was assigned as head of City Office for Substance Abuse Prevention.

In the letter dated March 1, Villarete requested Lao to issue an action memorandum on the complaint in compliance with President Rodrigo Duterte's Executive Order No. 6, which provides that all complaints should be acted upon within two days upon receipt of the complaint.

On March 2, Lao responded to the complaint over the alleged unreleased or unclaimed honoraria of the barangay tanods.

Lao said the executive department does not have any intention to withhold the honoraria granted by the city as a “privilege” to tanods.

He explained that the Association of Barangay Captains handled the processing of the honoraria from January to October 2017.

From November to December 2017, the processing was handled by the Barangay Affairs Office, Lao added

He said COSAP started processing the honoraria only in January this year under the authority of the Office of the Mayor.

“Cebu City is the only city giving tanods monthly honorarium, with a budget of about P78 million a year. Thus, being in the budget, the mayor wants to release this to the intended beneficiaries, but it is incumbent upon the recipients to comply with the requirements first,” he said.

To recall, Osmeña issued a memorandum last January 24 suspending the giving of honoraria, citing budgetary limitations starting February last year.

The giving of honoraria was restored after the tanods have undergone drug tests and evaluation of their performances in June last year.

In August 2017, Osmeña designated COSAP to collect weekly report on programs and campaign of the tanods against illegal drugs. It was then changed from weekly to every 5th and 25th of the month.

“As of December 2017, however, a good number of tanods still failed to comply with this order, in blatant defiance of the mandated pre-requisites. But there were many who were able to receive the honoraria, which was released by batch last year – proof that compliance would mean release of the money,” Lao said.

He said there are several barangays that will not accomplish the requirements asked by the city government.

Of the 80 barangays, Lao said there are eight barangays that have failed to submit their reports for the month of January 2018 such as barangays Toong, Buot, Babag, Lahug, Lorega-San Miguel, Calamba, Suba, and Basak San Nicolas.

As of now, Lao said the City Accounting Office has started processing the honoraria of tanods that will be released this month.

He is hoping that the 8888 Citizens' Complaint Hotline will conduct a “fair” determination of circumstances on the matter.