155 antipoverty ‘consultants’ fired

National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) Lead Convenor Liza Maza answer questions during her visit at PDI. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) has terminated the contracts of 155 consultants who were collectively receiving more than P5 million a month in professional fees, following President Duterte’s directive to remove all holdover officials from the previous administration.

In a phone interview yesterday, NAPC lead convenor Liza Maza told the Inquirer that she had just signed two memos: one informing the 155 consultants of the pretermination of their contracts; and the other notifying 82 employees of the nonrenewal of their contracts of service (COS).

When Maza assumed post as antipoverty chief in July, the NAPC had 161 consultants and 107 COS employees. The NAPC is only allowed to appoint workers to 50 regular plantilla positions, which means the number of consultants and contractual hands far outnumber the office’s regular employees.

Maza said the consultants were mostly hired between 2013 and 2014, in line with the “bottom-up budgeting” program of the previous administration. The consultants would then get rehired on six- to eight-month contracts.

“They have bastardized the term ‘consultant.’ A consultant should be highly skilled, or provides expertise for an activity. But these ones implement projects. They’re community organizers—but with a corrupted meaning, because they are given high fees, from P35,000 to P60,000 a month. They do social preparation. But I was also a community organizer. Those fees are way too high,” Maza said.

“Right now, what we pay the consultants, in our estimate, is about P5.8 million a month. The fees to be paid to consultants within a nine-month period alone totals to around P43.5 million, or about 36 percent of NAPC’s annual budget,” she said.