City Hall employees get P12T Charter Day bonus

The City Treasurer's Office finally released the P12,000 Charter Day bonus for each of the 4,800 regular and casual employees of the Cebu City government yesterday.

City Treasurer Emma Villarete said the money was released to the department heads and they will be the ones to distribute it to each of their personnel.

At the Office of the Mayor, personnel started lining up at the office of Mayor Michael Rama's secretary Belinda Navasques at 10 a.m., by lunchtime there were still some people in line.

The City Council recently approved P59.1 million for the Charter Day bonus of all employees.

Rama's original proposal to the City Council was only P7,000 to each of the employees, but the City Council advised the mayor to make it P10,000.

Instead of recommending the amount being pushed by the city legislators, the mayor increased it to P12,000.

Rama granted an additional P5,000 bonus to each employee because the city only gave P10,000 of the P15,000 Christmas bonus that was approved by the City Council.

The mayor did not give the P15,000 to each of the employees last December to stay within the budget limit for the personal services.

The law provides that in highly-urbanized city the personal services budget or the salaries and allowances of the employees should not exceed 45 percent of the total amount of revenue collections of the previous year.