Malacañang intervenes in SBMA salary feud
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Malacañang has intervened in a dispute between Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) Chair and Administrator Roberto Garcia and six members of the agency’s board of directors over the salary increase of its workers.
Michael Aguinaldo, deputy executive secretary for legal affairs of the Office of the President, had asked Directors Philip Camara, Ramon Sesdoyro, Alfonso Siapno, Gerald Sam del Rosario, John Philip Chua Chiaco and Norberto Sosa to comment on Garcia’s allegations that they railroaded an SBMA resolution to enforce the fourth tranche of the salary standardization law (Republic Act No 6758) in January.
The government is required to apply a modified salary scale for state workers in four yearly tranches or stages. The third tranche was applied in 2011 and the fourth tranche was to be given in 2012.
In February, however, a group of SBMA employees asked the Olongapo City regional trial court to compel Garcia to enforce the fourth tranche of their salary adjustments.
On the same month, Garcia wrote President Aquino to ask for the termination of the six directors for passing the resolution which required him to implement the fourth salary tranche.
In his Feb. 27 letter to the President, Garcia said the resolution was illegal because a salary adjustment was not in the agency’s 2015 budget.
In a March 12 letter, Aguinaldo asked the six directors, including Sosa, who resigned this month, to respond to Garcia’s allegations so Malacañang could determine whether it needed to investigate SBMA.
In an April 14 letter to the President, the six directors refuted the claims of Garcia and the other half of the SBMA board, composed of Directors Benjamin Antonio III, Francis Garcia, Wilfredo Pineda, Bienvenido Benitez, Cynthia Paulino and Joven Reyes.
“SBMA may have performed well financially but this came at the expense of its 3,000 plus employees’ rights and interests,” the letter said.
But Garcia and his allies in the board also claimed that the six directors who passed the salary resolution believed that enforcing the new salaries did not require the approval of the Department of Budget and Management and the Office of the President.
“Such move is clearly meant to twist the truth, compromise the credibility of the chairman and administrator and other directors [of SBMA],” Garcia said. Allan Macatuno, Inquirer Central Luzon
