Villanueva: Continued pay for government contractual workers during NCR quarantine closer to reality as CSC, COA finalizing details

Officials from the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the Commission on Audit (COA) have agreed to the proposal of Senator Joel Villanueva for the continued pay of Metro Manila-based contractuals working in government while the capital is under a community quarantine to stem the spread of COVID-19.

CSC and COA are meeting on Monday to hammer out the final details of the resolution, which will affect over 100,000 contractual workers categorized as either job order or contract of service, according to the lawmaker.

"We are grateful to our government for considering our proposal for job order or contract of service workers in government to still be paid while work in parts of the government remain suspended to prevent spreading the risk of our people from getting infected by COVID-19," said Villanueva, chair of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment, and Human Resource Development, in a statement.

"This will complement the existing work-from-home arrangement that government offices will implement while Metro Manila is under community quarantine. It will allow our colleagues under job order or contract of service categories to be paid while they are telecommuting during the quarantine," Villanueva added.

Villanueva explained that guidelines covering the payment of workers under job order and contract of service categories are jointly issued by the CSC and COA.

Nearly 670,000 contractual workers in government are under either job order or contract of service categories as of May 2019, according to CSC data. Some 110,000 of goverment contractual workers are in the National Capital Region where a community quarantine is being implemented from March 15 to April 14, 2020.

While the government ordered that a skeletal staffing be implemented in government offices to ensure that services remain unimpeded, the income of daily-paid workers will shrink significantly to the point that they may not be able to provide for their families, pointed out Villanueva, adding that this was the context of his proposal for the continued pay of contractual workers in government.

"We hope our CSC and COA officials are able to finalize the guidelines by Monday so that we can ease the concern of our government contractual workers and focus our attention and effort to other problems our country is facing, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic," Villanueva said.