City council seeks gratuity pay for job order, Contractual workers

BAGUIO CITY – The city’s legislative body has approved on first reading a proposed ordinance seeking to adopt Administrative Order No. 20 which authorizes the grant of gratuity pay for Fiscal Year 2019 to job order and contract of service workers in the government.

The administrative order was issued by President Rodrigo Duterte, through Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, on January 10 of this year.

Section 5 of the said administrative order provides that local government units are encouraged to adopt in their respective offices the grant of the said gratuity pay and utilize appropriate available funding sources.

Under the ordinance and the AO, all workers whose services are engaged by the city through job order, who have rendered a total or an aggregate of at least four months of satisfactory performance of services as stipulated in their respective contracts as of the 15th day of December 2019, and whose contracts were effective as of the same date, may be granted a one-time gratuity pay not exceeding P3,000.00.

Those who have rendered less than four months of service with the same conditions mentioned above may also be granted the one-time gratuity pay on a prorated basis as follows:

Three months or more but less than four months – not exceeding P2,000.00;

Two months or more but less than three months – not exceeding P1,500.00; and

Less than two months – not exceeding P1,000.00.

The proposed ordinance stated that the payment of the gratuity pay is provided for in an obligated fund in the amount of P648,000.00 under the Office of the City Mayor.

According to the AO, job order and contractual workers “do not enjoy benefits accorded to government employees such as the Personal Economic Relief Allowance, Mid-Year and Year-End Bonuses, and performance-Based Bonus among others as they have no “employer-employee relationship” with the government. Thus, a year-end gratuity pay to these workers is a well-deserved recognition of their hard work, the AO said.

In 2017, an administrative order was also issued authorizing the grant of gratuity pay to job order and contract of service workers for Fiscal Year 2016. -Jordan G. Habbiling