The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) clarified on Wednesday all local government employees will get the midyear bonus approved by President Aquino, but asserted the grant of bonuses to some 1.5 million government employees is not meant to buy their support for the administration candidates.
The mid-year bonuses ordered released by Mr. Aquino to all government employees shall be distributed not earlier than May 15, 2016, and will be funded from the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund under the 2016 national budget.
The estimated amount of expenses to be incurred for the mid-year bonuses, which will in effect be a 14th month pay for all government employees, is around P31 billion.
The mid-year bonuses of local government employees, meanwhile, shall be funded from the respective budget for personnel services of the local government concerned.
“In line with Executive Order 201 (Modifying the Salary Schedule for Civilian Government Personnel and Authorizing the Grant of Additional Benefits for both Civilian and Military and Uniformed Personnel), the Sanggunian is authorized to release the mid-year bonus on the said date,” Abad said in a statement.
“The Department encourages the timely release of funds so that all government employees, national and local, can benefit from the bonus to which they are entitled,” the statement added.
Abad denied speculations the release of bonuses to government employees is meant to gain favor among the estimated 1.5 million employees in the public sector on behalf of the administration’s candidates in the May 9 presidential elections.
The DBM had also been releasing quick response funds (QRF) to agencies like the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) during the past few weeks purportedly to replenish these funds, which are intended to be disbursed quickly should calamities arise.
“The QRF is the fastest way by which an agency can respond to an emergency or a calamity. It’s a facility we introduced so they don’t have to go through the approval processes that delay the response,” Abad said.
Just this week, the DBM released P842 million in QRF to the DSWD, but Abad said this release was to replenish the QRF of DSWD that was depleted with the distribution of relief goods among El Niño-hit provinces.
“We cannot say we will replenish it after the election because if something happens, we’ll be the ones to be blamed,” he said.
The P842 million is the second replenishment of DSWD’s QRF, after the P662.5 million replenishment last April 1.
This brought down the QRF balance of DSWD to P472 million as of April 19, or just 35.6 percent of its total QRF allocation for the full year of 2016.