Joseph Aquino, president of the Kaisahan ng mga Di-Regular na Empleyado ng NAPC (KaDRE), said that apart from the 82 contract of service (COS) personnel, Maza also fired 158 consultants in the agency.
Aquino said that Maza “portrayed our work superfluous and claimed we were overpaid.”
“On the contrary, our tasks enabled the agency to fulfill its mandate – to better provide services to the poor. We proposed collaborative processes and engaged government agencies, local government units, civil society and people’s organizations to develop and implement projects and plans together such as social housing for poor informal settlers, fish landings, and vegetable gardens,” he said.
Aquino also said “we provided administrative work to the agency’s 14 Basic Sectors, assisted in developing their agenda and advocacies, coordinated their activities with agencies and LGUs, participated in lobby work and campaigns.”
“We created maps of provinces and regions that showed the numbers and information on the specific situation of the poor in their localities, the types of programs that they have received and what they continue to need,” he added.
Aquino noted that the contractual personnel also “reported to the office every working day, are required to complete eight hours of work a day that are monitored by logging in and out on a time sheet, and must submit a 15-day report of their activities and outputs before we are given our pay.”
“We are like regular employees except that we do not enjoy the benefits given to regular workers such as sick leave, vacation leave, overtime pay, and counterpart premiums for our SSS and Phil- Health memberships. Our contracts are renewed or terminated based on the performance of our work,” he added.
Aquino asserted “our right as workers to be informed on matters that affect us. It is our right to know the objective basis for the mass layoff of select 82 COS personnel.”
"It is our right to know the process of re-application that many of us may opt to undergo. And it is our right to know the agency’s directions so we know what we are getting ourselves into,” he said.
