CCPO, PDEA personnel to get ‘missed’ allowance

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City Council has granted the request of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to reinstate and retroact the giving of allowances to their respective personnel.

This after the previous administration stopped giving allowances to CCPO in February 2019 and PDEA in January 2019.

The proposed resolution by Councilor Philip Zafra and Councilor Raymond Garcia was referred to the City Legal Office (CLO) for legal opinion on its legality.

The measure seeks to give retroactive allowances to these agencies, particularly for the months they were not given the same.

As per CLO, the city may provide allowances to CCPO and PDEA, pursuant to Section 458 (a)(i)(xi) of R.A. No 7160 which provides “that among the powers of the Sangguniang Panlungsod is it may approve of ordinances giving allowances to the national government officials stationed in or assigned to the city when finances of the Cebu City Government will allow.”

It was also mentioned that the only limitation of using city funds retroactively is the creation of new positions and salary increase adjustments, this limitation is provided under Section 325(g) of R.A. No. 7160 otherwise known as Local Government Code of 1991.

As stated in the letter of CLO to Zafra, since the purpose of the usage of the city funds is not for creating a new position or salary increase adjustments, it does not violate the prohibitions.

No Impediment

The CLO, for its part, affirmed that there is no legal impediment to provide the CCPO and PDEA the allowances retroactively, as long as the city has sufficient funds and an ordinance has been enacted for this purpose.

As mentioned in the proposed resolution, the appropriation balance needed for the total budgetary requirement is adequate to cover the retroactive allowances as it is already budgeted under the Peace and Order Program this year 2019.

The CCPO will be granted their allowances for February to June 2019 and PDEA will also receive their January to June 2019 allowances. (FREEMAN)