BARMM execs address salary delays

COTABATO CITY - Officials move to address persisting issue on purported delays in release of salaries in some agencies of the fledgling Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

BARMM Acting Executive Secretary Abdullah Cusain said affected workers are mostly those holding service or job order contracts whose renewable tenure granted by the previous administration has expired last June.

Cusain said the BARMM has renewed many of the affected workers’ job order or service contracts to up to December 31, 2019 when even regular appointments will be terminated, because of the abolition of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).     

BARMM Interior and Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, concurrent spokesperson for Chief Minister Murad, said he received reports that salaries of teachers of Arabic subjects in some public schools were reportedly delayed, as the former signatory of their pay checks has been appointed by the President to a higher position.

Cusain said the process of renewal has been slowed down by several factors, including a requirement by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) that in any event it will only recognize the region's Chief Minister and other presidential appointees as signatories of regional appointments.

He said one option that can unburden Chief Minister Hadji Murad Ebrahim from having to go through thousands of documents for his signature on almost daily basis, would be for regional Cabinet appointees to be confirmed by the Commission on Appointments (CA) of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) Parliament.

Cusain said another factor is the graduated retrenchment of employees, following the abolition of the ARMM, which is a natural consequence of dissolution of government offices.  

Some agencies of the defunct ARMM were drawing flak from contractual employees, purportedly over delayed releases of salaries.

Affected employees have written anonymous letters to the media, saying they were waiting for pays in a second or third month of delay, and still others have had claims for up to four months of unpaid salaries.

Meanwhile, the teaching personnel of the BARMM's Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE) are spared from impending termination of services resulting as an offshoot of ARMM's abolition, a new signatory would have to be designated as soon as possible, Sinarimbo said.

MBHTE is the region's counterpart of the national Department of Education (DepEd).

The ARMM as BARMM forerunner is deemed abolished by the passage and subsequent ratification of Republic Act 11054, the Bangsamoro Organic Law, as the charter of the new autonomous entity.

Many among signatory officials in the ARMM's tenure were coterminous appointees of its last administration and some of them have vacated their posts.

Current successors to those mid-level positions in the current transition period have been appointed and have assumed office. Their appointments have had to be signed individually by the Chief Minister, until Cabinet appointments shall have been confirmed by the BTA Parliament's Commission on Appointments (CA). Nash B. Maulana