Now strictly looking into questionable disbursement of public funds by government agencies, the Commission on Audit (CoA) has flagged the Senate’s policies on granting overtime payments for its employees despite failing to comply with the established guidelines set for such renumeration to their personnel.
Based on its annual audit for 2025, CoA noted that the Senate has failed to act on reforming its protocols as far as payment for overtime services are concerned and significantly, the same issue had also been observed in the previous year’s audit report.
According to state auditors, it appears that the Senate had granted overtime pay to employees that had failed to complete the required 40 regular working hours while rendering at least two hours of authorized overtime service.
The CoA report asserted that “since the Senate is observing a four-day work week with employees rendering 10 hours per day, any absence of any given day results in non-completion of the 40 hours requirement.”
“For CY 2025, Senate employees received overtime pay for services rendered during the week even when they incurred absences,” the audit assessment added.
“Such practices contradicted pertinent provisions of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Joint Circular No. 02, Series of 2015,” state auditors pointed out.
They revealed that even with the audit stating that the Senate had been recommended to review and revise its internal rules and procedures to align with the said circular, this had not been addressed satisfactorily.
Officials from the Senate had complied with the recommendations, with the Senate Secretary issuing an advisory in November of 2024 while the draft of the revised policy was pending approval.
However, despite the supposed changes, CoA said that the legislative office continued utilizing its existing policies which had already been previously questioned.
“We recommend, and management agreed, to finalize the draft Senate policy on the rendition of overtime services of employees considering the peculiarity of activities of the Senate,” CoA stressed.
