Government employees to get mid-year bonus beginning May 15

Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Sec. Amenah Pangandaman has confirmed that qualified government personnel will receive their mid-year bonus starting May 15 this year. “I am pleased to announce that our civil servants will receive their mid-year bonus this year. We know that this is eagerly awaited by our fellow government employees and will significantly assist them in meeting their daily needs,” Pangandaman said. She added “As always, we remind all government agencies and offices to ensure the prompt and timely release of bonuses to their employees, in accordance with our existing rules and regulations. This will begin on May 15." The mid-year bonus is equal to one month’s basic pay of entitled government workers as of May 15. It is given to eligible personnel who have worked at least four months from July 1 of the previous year to May 15 of the current year. The personnel must still be employed in the government as of May 15 of the current year and should have received at least a satisfactory performance rating in the most recent rating period or applicable performance appraisal period. The mid-year bonus will be provided to all civilian personnel, including regular, casual, and contractual employees. This includes appointive or elective positions, both full-time and part-time, in the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, Constitutional Commissions, other Constitutional Offices, State Universities and Colleges (SUCs), and Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs) covered by the Compensation and Position Classification System (CPCS), as well as local government units (LGUs). The mid-year bonus isn’t just for civilian personnel; it also extends to military and uniformed personnel. This includes members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines under the Department of National Defense, as well as personnel from the Philippine National Police, Philippine Public Safety College, Bureau of Fire Protection, Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, Bureau of Corrections, Philippine Coast Guard, and National Mapping and Resource Information Authority. They’re all eligible to receive this bonus. The allocation of mid-year bonuses for personnel in provinces, cities, municipalities, and barangays will be determined by their respective sanggunian, subject to policy conditions for the purpose under DBM Budget Circular No. 2017-2. Moreover, the appropriations for the grant of the mid-year bonus were comprehensively released to the concerned agencies at the start of the fiscal year. Hence, the provision of said benefits to the qualified personnel is already under the jurisdiction of the concerned agencies. 📷 Department of Budget and Management FB

Foreign businesses call for passage of ‘Konektadong Pinoy’ bill

The Joint Foreign Chambers of the Philippines (JFC) has called on the government to immediately pass the Konektadong Pinoy bill, formerly known as the proposed Open Access in Data Transmission Act, which is pending in the current Congress. The bill aims to strengthen the country’s internet infrastructure and enhance digital connectivity, as it will also reduce costs and expand access to high-quality internet services for all Filipinos, especially those in unserved and underserved areas. “According to a recent World Bank study, only about 33 percent of Filipino households have access to fixed internet,” said the JFC, a coalition of the American, Australian-New Zealand, Canadian, European, Japanese, and Korean chambers, and the Philippine Association of Multinational Companies Regional Headquarters, Inc. (PAMURI), representing a combination of more than 3,000 member-businesses. It added, “Prohibitive costs and lack of internet infrastructure contribute to the prevailing digital divide. The Philippines also lags behind its middle-income peers in ASEAN in internet access, speed, and affordability for mobile and fixed services. We call for swift passage of the Konektadong Pinoy (Open Access) bill to bridge these critical gaps in internet infrastructure and help ensure that families have the internet they need for work, school, and more.” The group noted that the bill is included in the Common Legislative Agenda of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), and was identified by the Senate as among the LEDAC priority measures. “Passage of this bill will reduce costs and expand access to high-quality internet services by lowering barriers to entry in the data transmission sector and encouraging more competition and investment in data transmission, especially in underserved areas throughout the Philippines,” the foreign businesses underscored. The JFC said that it supported key reforms in the bill, such as the removal of the legislative franchise requirement for data transmission industry participants and adoption of a policy framework that promotes infrastructure sharing. “The Konektadong Pinoy bill will accelerate the growing trend towards digital transformation in the Philippines,” the JFC emphasized. The JFC is a coalition of the American, Australian-New Zealand, Canadian, European, Japanese, Korean chambers and PAMURI. The JFC shared that its member businesses are engaged in some $100 billion worth of trade and over $30 billion worth of investments in the Philippines. They declared support for open international trade, increased foreign investment, and improved conditions for business to benefit both the Philippines and the countries that the group represents. 📷 Marvin Meyer (unsplash)

“Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program” to go full blast in July

The 'Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program (FSP)' is a flagship poverty reduction initiative of the government. It aims to reduce the incidence of voluntary hunger experienced by low-income households through monetary-based assistance and will be fully implemented starting this coming July. This was announced by Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Undersecretary Edu Punay at the Saturday News Forum in Quezon City. “This month po, magsisimula na iyong validation at ating registration ng 300,000 beneficiaries para sa July implementation ng program. Naka-hire na po this month ng 1,000 validators dito sa mga implementation sites. Twenty-one provinces in 10 regions po iyan na na-identify ng ating departamento bilang priority areas," Usec Punay discussed. He bared that the DSWD, being the lead agency in the implementation of the program, is currently completing the final preparations for its full implementation following what he described as its successful six-month pilot implementation in various parts of the country. He noted that the pilot implementation, which started in December 2023 and is about to be completed this month, covered select areas in the National Capital Region (NCR), Bicol Region, Cagayan Valley, Caraga Region, and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The program showed a significant positive impact on the lives of the beneficiaries based on indicators that the department had set, he added. The DSWD is currently conducting a complete review and assessment of the results of the pilot implementation, which will then aid the agency in determining the next set of beneficiaries and in further enhancing the program. He explained that under the FSP, the DSWD will provide food augmentation to the bottom one million Filipino households who belong to the food-poor criteria as defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the DSWD Listahanan 3. The beneficiaries will be given monetary-based assistance in the form of food credits which will be loaded onto their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. These food credits can be used to purchase select food items such as rice, vegetables, meat, and other essential goods from Kadiwa stalls as well as eligible partner supermarkets and merchant stores. 📷 Saturday News Forum

“Era of global boiling”

The intense heat, which has been reaching dangerous levels for many weeks now, has been causing the suspension of face-to-face sessions in schools, widely affecting agriculture as well as other industries and livelihoods, and bringing so much discomfort to the people. The extreme heat that we are experiencing now, reminds us of the warning aired by United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres in June 2023, “The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived,” he declared. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) has noted that various locations in the country had logged dangerous heat numbers, from 42 degrees Celsius to 51 degrees Celsius. Department of Science and Technology (DoST) Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. warned that global warming would continue until mankind starts reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Global warming, he stressed, is being accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels. Solidum explained that countries must work together to keep from reaching the threshold, the first being the 1.5-degrees Centigrade “industrial-level temperature.” “If it gets hotter (by 2 to 2.5 degrees), we don’t know what will happen and there will be many consequences,” he said. “Era of global boiling” World’s hottest day on record, hottest week, hottest month – these all occurred in 2023, which, as United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres has warned, were evidences that “the era of global boiling” has arrived. “The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived,” Guterres said in June 2023. “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” he said as he described “children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat.” The UN, citing data from various weather and climate monitoring centers, said that the Earth experienced its hottest month ever in July 2023, including the hottest week which was on the first week of that month, and the hottest day in history, July 4, 2023, which was even within the hottest three days in a row on world record: July 3, 4 and 5 of that year, marked by an average global temperature of 17.18 degrees Celsius (62.92 degrees Fahrenheit). During those dates, dangerously intense heat threatened the peoples of the world with heat-related health problems, the UN said. Researchers attribute these record heat levels to climate change brought about by a combination of El Niño, a weather pattern that has a global warming effect, and of human activities such as burning of fuels for industries, transportation and daily chores, as well as accumulation of non-biodegradable wastes, neglect and even destruction of the environment such as forests and watersheds, and many others. Scientists point out that “global boiling” is not a scientific term, although they recognize the intention of the UN official to drum up the warning and the call for the world to act. “He [Guterres] tried to come up with an even more compelling and sensational wording to try and get people’s attention, and I think we all understand why he’s doing that, because we have to make the governments take climate change seriously and put it at the top of their agendas,” according to the chairman of Britain’s Climate Change Committee. Secretary Solidum commented, “The term global boiling was used by the UN secretary-general to highlight the fact that we are experiencing global warming and for all countries to act, especially those who burn carbon.” Earth Summit In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit, was held to discuss the steps that countries should undertake to save the world. The Earth Summit resulted in the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system." Its supreme or highest decision-making body is the Conference of the Parties (COP) which meets annually to assess progress in dealing with climate change. In 2014, the historic Paris Agreement on climate change was established to provide an opportunity for countries to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change. The countries adopted the Paris Agreement at the COP21. It has been agreed by countries that a combination of actions – from individuals, governments, industries, and all sectors is needed to address climate change. To address climate change and the “global boiling,” steps must be undertaken at high-level, such as governments’ and industries’ transitioning to the use of clean and renewable energy sources, reforestation and nurturing of the environment, reduction of carbon footprints and the like, and at individual and domestic level, such as simple waste segregation, planting of trees, recycling and several others that ordinary people and household can accomplish.