TACLOBAN CITY—More than 3,700 job order workers of the Department of Public Works and Highways regional and 13 district offices have been out of work because of the non-passage of the 2019 national budget.
Records from DPWH-8 show that 3,786 job order (JO) workers of the said government agency were told not to report for work effective January 1.
The failure to approve the 2019 P3.757 trillion General Appropriations Act was cited as the reason why these JO workers were told not to report for work.
The national government is operating under the reenacted budget of 2018.
Tonette Lim, DPWH regional information officer, said that with the failure to enact the 2019 national budget, there is no way their office could provide the salaries of the affected JO workers.
“If they report for work, they could not expect that they will be paid their salaries because our department has no funding yet for that,” she said.
She added that if the respective heads of the department where these affected JO workers are detailed would ask them to report, these head offices would be held responsible for paying the salaries of these workers.
Lim said it would be unfair for the JO workers to ask them to report for work and not be given their compensation.
She added that in the case of her office, five of their JO workers were affected.
“At present only two of us are doing the work. And without our JO workers, our works are really affected because they are really a great help to us,” she said.
Lim said all the 13 district engineering offices of the DPWH-8 are also affected by the non-passage of the 2019 national budget.
‘Ana’, who asked not to be identified, said she really felt bad that she found herself out of work at the beginning of the year.
“Our concern is we have our daily expenses to worry about. I have four children who are all in school,” she said.
Ana has been working as a JO worker for the past 10 years now and earning over P14,300 monthly./lzb