Antonio Bendita
KORONADAL CITY—A town mayor in South Cotabato has threatened to fire municipal employees who would refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19.Mayor Antonio Bendita of Surallah town said the town’s pandemic task force agreed on Friday that local government workers should all be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Local government workers “must serve as models for the rest of the constituents,” specially that a “great deluge looms large before us in the form of the Delta variant, which is more potent and highly transmissible,” the official stressed on Monday’s flag-raising ceremony when he announced his directive to terminate the employment of unvaccinated workers.
Bendita, a lawyer, said the dismissal process of a regular employee who would refuse COVID-19 vaccination would be filed before the Civil Service Commission (CSC). The mayor did not say the number of the town’s workforce and how many have refused to be vaccinated.
The Inquirer sought the CSC regional director for comment but the staff who answered the phone said the official was still in a webinar. Arthur Condes, acting information officer of the Department of the Interior and Local Government in Soccsksargen (Region 12) , said the agency heard about Bendita’s policy through local media reports but could not act on it in the absence of a formal complaint.
According to the mayor, job order employees, or those hired to render specific tasks, who will refuse COVID-19 inoculation will be very easy to fire since they have been hired at his discretion.
“We already notified the local government workers to get vaccinated,” he said. “Now, if they refuse and eventually get infected, I will even file criminal negligence [charges] against them,” the mayor said.
“You can go to jail if you spread a disease to others,” he added.
No work, no pay
As a lawyer who used to handle labor cases, Bendita said having a communicable or highly contagious disease could be a ground for termination of employment.
Bendita also advised municipal workers who refuse COVID-19 vaccination because of their religious beliefs to stop reporting to work until after the pandemic. The “no work, no pay” policy will be applied to them, he said.
Dr. Neil Crespo, municipal health officer, said vaccination was the only hope to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and they were ready to give advice to those who were hesitant to get the vaccines.
He said the municipality has available Janssen and AstraZeneca vaccines while Sinovac’s CoronaVac jabs are still due to arrive.
Surallah, a first-class municipality located in the upper valley of South Cotabato (population: 89,340 as of 2020 census), has 79 active cases as of Tuesday, out of the 468 confirmed COVID-19 cases reported since March last year. The town recorded 19 deaths, data from the South Cotabato Integrated Provincial Health Office showed. INQ