Cagayan de Oro City Hall won’t be giving cars as prizes to their employees during their annual Christmas party in compliance to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s directive, Mayor Rolando ‘Klarex’ Uy said on Monday.

 

Mayor Uy confirmed this during his monthly message to City Hall’s bureaucracy during the first Monday flag raising program, saying they are obligated to follow the President’s directive even if they already prepared the budget that included sports utility vehicles (SUVs) as grand prizes and several motorcycles as consolation prizes for City Hall’s regular, casual and job order employees.

 

‘(Our decision to cut down on the prizes) was based on the recent management committee meeting (by all departments). But we will still allocate 50 kilos of rice to each employee as we promised and minor prizes will be given during the party. Your department managers will inform you of these developments,’ Mayor Klarex told employees in Visayan.

 

Mayor Klarex said he asked budget officials that the rice allocation be spared from the cuts since it is essential to the City Hall employees. Last month, President Marcos urged local governments to avoid holding lavish Christmas parties in solidarity with the thousands of Filipinos who suffered losses during the spate of typhoons that struck the country in recent weeks.

 

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin also said while the President didn’t issue an executive order for this purpose, he appealed to local governments and government agencies to instead donate the budget they allocated for their Christmas parties to the typhoon victims./Stephen Capillas of City Information Office