City council wants barangay officials included on ECC compensation packages

BAGUIO CITY – (March 2021) – The City Council, during last Monday’s regular session, requested the national and regional offices of the Employees Compensation Commission (ECC) to study the possibility of including barangay officials who contracted the Corona Virus Disease (COVID) 2019 as beneficiaries covered under the agency’s compensation packages.

In a resolution, local legislators recognized the important and essential role of barangay officials in the ongoing tough fight against COVID-19 which deserves reciprocation by the government to further motivate and inspire them to serve their constituents well.

According to the council, barangay officials had been overloaded with voluminous tasks – from quarantine implementation, health protocol imposition to the distribution of Social Amelioration Program (SAP) and profiling as well as distribution of relief goods to report submission apart from their already established regular tasks and obligations.

The council pointed out that the expanded service roles of the barangay officials during the pandemic placed them as daily frontliners directly exposing them to the COVID-19 with the danger of contracting the virus and transmitting the same to the members of their families and the community they serve.

The ECC is a government agency and corporation attached to the labor department that is mandated to provide appropriate compensation to workers in the event of work-related eventualities.

Moreover, ECC sets the prevailing guidelines on who are qualified and covered under the EC benefit packages that covers workers from the private sector and those government employees such as private sector workers who are compulsory members of the Social Security System (SSS) and sea-based Oversees Filipino workers, government sector workers who are members of the Stat-owned Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), including members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), government officials who are receiving regular salary and all casual, emergency, temporary and substitutes of contractual employees.

The council hopes for the inclusion of barangay officials and workers in the agency’s compensation packages. – Dexter A. See