‘No vax, no Christmas bonus’ for Cebu City gov’t workers

Cebu City Hall —FILE PHOTO

CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines — They better be vaccinated when the City Hall “Santa Claus’’ comes to town.

Acting Mayor Michael Rama wants to play Santa to more than 5,000 city government employees, but there’s a catch: They all have to get inoculated against COVID-19 before they can receive a P20,000 Christmas bonus each.

As in Christmases past, the city government has set aside a sizable amount for the bonus of regular and casual employees in December this year. But Rama said the P100-million fund will be released only if all the employees are vaccinated against COVID-19.

“Giving bonuses is a prerogative of the city government. We may grant it or not,” he said after last Monday’s flag-raising ceremony at City Hall. “I am very serious. I won’t release the bonus until all city employees will be vaccinated.”

Job order employees are not entitled to a bonus, but will receive a “gratuity pay” of P3,000 each.

The idea, Rama said, was to incentivize the city’s mass inoculation program to achieve herd immunity.

As of Monday, at least 297,101 people in the city have been fully vaccinated, less than half of the minimum 700,000 targeted by the local government.

“All City Hall workers should be vaccinated because we should set a good example, being government employees,” said Rama, who now serves as acting mayor while Mayor Edgardo Labella is on sick leave.

Councilor Joel Garganera, head of the city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), agreed with Rama.

“We have to remember that the city government of Cebu is the first LGU (local government unit) to say that if you are not fully vaccinated then you cannot enter restaurants and bars,” he said.

“What will be our moral ascendancy if our workers, our employees in the city government are not vaccinated? [Even] restaurants and bars require their employees, staff members, and their service crew to get vaccinated against COVID-19,” he added.

Raffle prizes, too

Officials have yet to determine how many of the more than 5,000 employees have not received a COVID-19 shot, City Administrator Floro Casas said on Tuesday.

In Cebu City, only fully vaccinated persons are allowed to dine indoors at restaurants and enter shops offering personal care services.

This year they are also eligible to join a raffle organized by City Hall in partnership with the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. The prizes include a house and lot, a brand-new car, P100,000 worth of gift certificates for a hotel accommodation, P100,000 worth of scholarships, and P100,000 worth of groceries.

Some government officials have been toying with the idea of making vaccination mandatory to achieve herd immunity.

Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, had broached the idea of enforcing this requirement through an executive order from the President.

“One of the ways we can do this (achieve immunity) is to make it mandatory,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said on Friday last week.

The government has set a three-day national vaccination drive beginning Nov. 29 to reach its target of inoculating at least 50 million Filipinos by the end of the year.