DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/29 November) – Close to 50 percent of the supplemental budget the city council approved on Monday will go the Pasko Fiesta next month, which includes cash incentives for City Hall and barangay employees.
The city council approved P360.165 million as supplemental budget. Of this amount, P156.760 million or 43.5 percent was allotted for Pasko Fiesta, according to Councilor Myrna Dalodo-Ortiz, chair of the committee on finance, ways and appropriations.
The Lingap Program and the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) also received huge shares of the additional budget.
The budget for Pasko Fiesta includes the cash incentives for the personnel hired as job orders and contractual. Among those who will receive cash gifts are the barangay health workers, barangay nutrition scholars, task force and barangay volunteer workers.
Job order and contractual; employees will receive P10,000 as Christmas bonus or double the amount they received last year. The plantilla personnel, on the other hand, will get P15,000 each from the miscellaneous personnel benefits fund,.
At least P40 million will be allocated to augment the funds of Lingap Program. As of Nov. 21, the finance committee reported that only P872 was left in the program’s current budget of P75 million from the city’s annual funds.
The current fund of the program was paid to the city’s obligations last year due to the Southern Philippine Medical Center, which submitted late billings.
“In annual budget 2011, an appropriation of P75 million for Lingap was made, but what this budget has been able to pay as current bill is so far only for the month of February 2011 because the rest of the P75 million went to pay for 2010 accounts,” the report stated.
The actual expenses of the program last year amounted to P136.8 million.
The budget for the DRMM fund or what used to be called calamity fund will also be increased by P2.4 million. At present, it only has a balance of P85 million as majority of the budget was already used earlier this year.
At least P90.5 million was appropriated for the flashflood incident in June that killed some 30 individuals. (MindaNews)