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CSC orders BACIWA: Reinstate 60 sacked employees

Nonoy Espina file photo

The 60 terminated employees of the Bacolod City Water District (BACIWA) will get their jobs back after the Civil Service Commission (CSC) ruled in their favor and ordered their reinstatement.

This came eight months after their positions were declared redundant by the BACIWA Board of Directors following the joint venture agreement (JVA) between the utility firm and PrimeWater Infrastructure Corp. (PrimeWater), which is owned by the Villar family.

PrimeWater took over the operations of BACIWA on Nov. 16, 2020, and the 60 employees were separated from the utility firm effective December 31.

The dismissed workers were given options to either re-apply with PrimeWater or to avail of the early retirement package, which they refused since they are “regular government employees with permanent positions,” Leny Espina, president of the BACIWA Employees Union (BEU), said earlier.

The terminated employees sought CSC’s help to shed light on the status of their employment.

The 38-page CSC resolution promulgated on August 20 and signed by its Western Visayas regional director, Nelson Sarmiento, ordered that the terminated workers should l be “reinstated without loss of seniority and shall be entitled to full pay from the time of their separation until actual reinstatement.”

The CSC said there is a strong indication that the reorganization was motivated not for the interest of economy and efficiency, but as a mere subterfuge to circumvent the workers’ right to security of tenure.

“The essence of redundancy is that the existing manpower exceeds more than what is necessary in the operation of a certain agency. In other words, an employee’s position may be declared redundant when his/her services are already in excess of what is reasonably demanded by the actual requirement of the agency. The burden lies on the employer to prove the factual and legal basis for the termination of an employee’s services on the ground of redundancy,” CSC explained in the resolution.

It stressed that BACIWA has “failed to show adequate and convincing proof” that the reduction of workforce and the termination of the workers’ employment are necessary.

“It is not enough for them to merely declare their positions redundant. Adequate proof is essential to show the actual situation to justify the termination of the affected employees for redundancy,” the CSC added.

Espina, who had worked with BACIWA for more than 18 years, said they were happy that the CSC came to the defense of the workers, who were making ends meet in the last eight months.

She said that some of the workers have temporarily worked for delivery service firms and just about anything to sustain their daily needs.

The workers had lost their jobs at the start of the new year, and that the only thing they got from BACIWA was their last salary in December and their 13th-month pay.

Espina said they fought and stood for their principles because they believed that they were illegally dismissed by BACIWA, although there were nine of the employees who later took the deal.

“I understood their decision given our economic situation right now…this is about survival,” she said.

Espina, who recently lost her husband, veteran journalist Nonoy Espina, a champion of human rights and press freedom, said she remembered him as he was there for the workers from the start.

“This is not because I was his wife or I was the head of the union. This is because he also fought for the rights of the workers,” she said.

She said she cried on learning about the CSC resolution.

Espina recalled that there was a time when she had to go to the bank to explain to the manager that the terminated workers could not pay their loans because they lost their jobs, “I had to appeal to the bank to understand our situation, and that they will not abandon their loans”, she said.

She said some of the terminated workers, like her, were not able to find jobs since they were fired.

DIGICAST NEGROS could not reach BACIWA acting general manager Michael Soliva for a comment.

Earlier, the Commission on Audit (COA) came out with a report questioning the legality of BACIWA’s joint venture agreement with PrimeWater.

In COA’s 2020 audit report, it recommended that the BACIWA management should seek clarifications and reconciliation to ascertain the legality of the joint venture operation between the district and PrimeWater.

COA also noted that the management should create an inventory committee to conduct the physical inventory of all property and equipment of the district, as well as to conduct an investigation on the existence of Construction in Progress accounts as it could not ascertain these accounts due to non-inventory.

Councilor Wilson Gamboa Jr., who had joined the fight of the workers since Day 1, said he is hoping that the COA report and the CSC resolution will eventually nullify the JVA contract, which was not really for the interest of the government, the workers, and the public.

Gamboa said he had insisted from the start that the workers were illegally terminated by the board.

Meanwhile, Gamboa, in the regular session of the Sangguniang Panlungsod, Wednesday, August 25, pushed for the approval of his resolution requesting the BACIWA-PrimeWater management to submit their accomplishment report to the council for transparency.

The consumers are complaining about the “very poor, dismal and inefficient water services,” he said.*

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