Senate Resolution to suspend GOCCs and GFIs excessive bonuses
Senators urging President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to suspend all the “unusually large and apparently excessive allowances, bonuses, incentives and other perks of the governing boards” of government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) as well as of government financial institutions (GFIs).
Senate Resolution 17 was presented without objections to its adoption to 17 senators present in the plenary by Senate Finance Committee chairman Franklin Drilon. This resolution articulated the need to immediately suspend all the allowances, bonuses, incentives, and other perks being received by the members of the board of GOCCs and GFIs pending the enactment of the needed legislation for their regulation. If the respective boards of these GOCCs and GFIs would be allowed, as noted in the resolution, to continue to grant such bonuses to themselves, the damage to these corporations and institutions would be irreparable and would further erode government revenues. It also expressed the need to turn over to the concerned GOCC and GFI the fees, bonuses, stock options, allowances and other benefits that the board members have been getting while they sit as representatives of government firms in various private corporations.
The resolution does not however cover executives and employees of government corporations.
Tuesday, the Senate Committees put former Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) officer-in-charge Macra Cruz in a hot seat about the 25 month bonuses granted to the board members for 2009. Despite these huge bonuses, the agency incurred about P3.5 billion losses in 2008 and P399 million in 2009. Cruz confirmed receiving the 25 months bonus and the agency’s losses saying it was due to “fluctuation on foreign currency.”
Commission on Audit assistant commissioner Jaime Naranjo told the same hearing the CoA has “disallowed” the 33 types of bonuses being enjoyed by employees and officers of the MWSS for “lack of legal basis.”
MWSS officials received more than P384 million in bonuses and allowances last year, according to company documents.
“That’s 37 months’ pay in one year,” Drilon said. “25 months of bonus in 2009 plus their 12 months basic salary is really obscene by any language.”
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