DPWH, Dalog agree on workers’ tenure

By Pamela F. Dungala

BONTOC, Mountain Province -- The district engineering office of this province has agreed on the proposal of Rep. Maximo Dalog to accommodate applicants flocking the DPWH office for a month only to work as road side maintenance laborers under the district office.

With the increasing percentage of unemployment rate for local wage earners, Dalog and DPWH officials agreed for the office to accommodate 252 roadside laborers for October, 180 workers for November and 160 laborers for December which exceeded authorized roadside maintenance workers for this province.

DPWH Secretary Rogelio L. Singson has issued a memorandum early this year relative to the hiring of maintenance workers and specifying the number of the same for every district with the Mountain Province District Engineering Office having only 89 authorized roadside workers.

The agreement between the district and the congressman shall make the applicants take turn to work as roadside maintenance workers.

However, roadside maintenance workers assigned to remote road sections will remain until the end of the year as it is difficult for the office to conduct orientations every month which shall be time-consuming and to save government resources as the office is issuing working gears/gadgets and/or tools to every employed maintenance worker.

The non-replacement of said workers will also not disrupt the flow of maintenance activities on hard-to-reach areas which are vulnerable to slides and road blocks.

On the other hand, others who were not accommodated will replace those who were accommodated for this month of October 2011 particularly those assigned within the capital town and those assigned at the office as agreed.

Wages for these maintenance workers shall be sourced out from the savings of the maintenance section.

However, since the district engineering office has exceeded the authorized number of maintenance workers since April 2011 to present, said savings is no longer enough to employ every applicant coming in the office.

“The savings is already depleted; hence, we have to cut off for the mean time the employment of additional roadside maintenance workers”, said maintenance engineer Manuel Likigan.

This is to maintain workers until the end of the year especially that we are experiencing heavy rains and typhoons these months.

Meanwhile, while the district has cut-off the hiring for roadside workers, it has still employed hundreds of workers since last year with Dalog mediating to address unemployment rate of the province.
As it is, maintenance workers are still expected to work meticulously while complying with maintenance orders even with only a month of employment.