Cotabato City—A top-rated Moro executive is leaving the Muslim region to decline a 200-percent separation package offered to old employees whose services are supposed to end on Dec. 31.
Omarkhayyam Ibil Dalagan, regional director of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority for the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said he would have no option but to sustain his leave-credits in order to obtain a post-retirement pension upon turning 60.
Under the Bangsamoro Organic Law, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao is deemed abolished and all positions therein are dissolved by the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Thus, this stirs massive separation from the service of some 6,000 or more employees, from top to bottom, who may opt to accept a maximum of 200 percent separation package, based on their latest salary rates.
For this, Dalagan, 51, said he would be leaving Aug. 9 to transfer as a provincial director in Tesda Region 9, so he could work nine more years of continuous service toward retirement, in order to qualify for the Government Service Insurance System pension.
Dalagan said he had told BARMM Education Minister Mohaguer Iqbal in last Monday’s exit conference for him, that Tesda’s top regional post is “too vulnerable to corruption.”
At the same time, Dalagan on Wednesday told the BARMM leadership that the national government has allotted some P200 million in programs fund for vocational technology education, including support to rice production vocational education for farmers.
In his letter to BARMM Chief Minister Hadji Murad Ebrahim dated July 30, Dalagan said the funds have been allotted, thus: P 55,845, 873.00 for Skills Training for Employment Program; P31,496,250 for Rice Enhancement Scholarship Program; and P184,775,000 under the Universal Access to Quality Education Act.
With officials sworn-in before the Qur’an (Muslim Holy Book), Ebrahim’s fledgling BARMM administration has vowed to be tightly vigilant against corruption in the disposition of regional funds and other anomalous sources of government kickbacks.
Dalagan, a Taosug-Sama Muslim, said just last week, a visitor claiming to represent a vocational school was asking for scholarship slots, and that the man was offering him 30 percent funds return kickback.
“Muslims are stereotyped almost everywhere. But let there be sometimes when we have our right to brag also that Muslims are supposed to behave in accordance with values, ethics and standards set by the ‘deen’ (system) that is, Islam,” he said.
The Tesda official rejected the offer, and instead posed the challenge to the visitor to instead use much of his profit in improving on the standards and facilities of his school, so it would be evaluated fairly.
Dalagan has been lauded by BARMM Tesda staff and clients, not only for his tough management policies against corruption, but also for steering the agency so well, by topping all Tesda regional offices in performance rating.
The Tesda national leadership has officially recognized this in a certificate of commendation, ranking the Tesda-ARMM under Dalagan as the “Topmost contributor to the Agency’s Organizational Outcome Performance.”
“The output contributed by the Region allowed the agency to successfully surpass its target commitment under the said performance Indicator in the GAA (General Appropriations Act) of 2018,” reads the commendation signed by Tesda Director-General Isidro Lapeña.
The Manila Standard obtained a copy of Dalagan’s letter to Ebrahim, telling the fledgling regional government to submit Qualification Maps by August 9 for would-be beneficiaries of the P 200 million vocational technology education funds, for approval by Tesda national office.
Dalagan, a graduate of the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP), said he had to be mindful of the Bangsamoro as well as the clients and beneficiaries of the new Tesda-BARMM programs: He said he had offered his unsolicited advice for the regional leadership to “carefully select” his successor who should be “tough to hold ground against massive temptation of corruption” in Tesda’s top regional seat. Nash B