Predecessor slams Maza for firing of consultants

Former National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) lead convenor Joel Rocamora has taken to task incumbent NAPC convenor Liza Maza for firing consultants hired during his time, calling the move a “vengeful campaign” that could only hurt the agency.

“If Liza Maza paid more attention to doing the NAPC work instead of looking for ways to accuse me of corruption … she might have discovered that far from being a drain on NAPC resources, the consultants she has dismissed added resources to the NAPC’s meager budget and extended the agency’s services to the poor,” Rocamora said in a statement sent to the Inquirer on Thursday.

Maza last week terminated the contracts of 155 consultants who she said was costing the agency more than P5.8 million a month in professional fees, in line with President Duterte’s directive to remove all holdover officials from the previous administration.

When she took over in July, the NAPC had 161 consultants and 107 contract of service employees. The NAPC is only granted 50 plantilla positions—meaning the number of consultants and contractuals far outnumber the NAPC’s regular employees.

“This is an insult to the NAPC’s mandate to serve the interest of the poor, which is why we are terminating the contracts of 155 of these consultants whose number became bloated particularly in the last six years, with equally bloated compensation package,” Maza had said in a statement.

But Rocamora said there was a “simple explanation” to the high number of consultants. He said it was impossible for the NAPC to accomplish its task with its limited workforce.

“Thus, the large number of consultants and contract of service staff. It should also be pointed out that NAPC does not have local offices; thus, it has to hire people, often consultants, to undertake local work,” Rocamora said.

In explaining the large salaries, Rocamora pointed out the “difficulties to contract nongovernment organizations” in the aftermath of the pork barrel scam, prompting the NAPC to directly administer local projects. “The large sums paid to some consultants actually represented allowances for several organizers,” he said.

Rocamora pointed out that the consultants’ fees were not draining the funds of the NAPC, as they were hired through projects from other government agencies and the World Bank, which had “augmented the meager budget of the NAPC by around P110 million or more than 50 percent of the agency’s budget in 2016.”

Among others, these programs included a joint project with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources for organizing fisherfolk for the building of fish landings in 520 sites throughout the Philippines, which had hired 75 consultants, and a community vegetable and fruit garden project in 309 municipalities, funded from the bottom-up budgeting this year.