A total of 254 Quezon City government employees have been given regular employment status and will now receive a minimum wage and various benefits.

This came after Mayor Joy Belmonte ordered her officials to expedite the city's regularization process of the contractual workers, most of them are working for at least over nine years now, and asked the latter to regularize employees "periodically."

One of the newly regularized workers is 55-year-old Precy Linag, a teacher for 22 years in Barangay Pasong Tamo.

Linag shared that she used to receive a "meager" salary of P5,000 to P10,000 before she became a permanent employee. She said that it was only under Belmonte’s term that her salary was raised to P13,000 after the local chief executive signed a memorandum circular bumping the salaries of contractual workers to a “livable” rate.

The local government said that the 254 former contractual workers have now the security of tenure as well as 13th month bonus, performance-based bonus, and allowances, which they lacked due to delays of their regularization.

“The delay in the regularization of some of our employees may be attributable to the fact that the previous administration conducted screening and regularization only at the end of their term,” Ronald Tan, officer-in-charge of the QC Human Resource Management Department (HRMD), said.

Belmonte urged the regularization of the workers as she said, “The time has come for Quezon City to depoliticize appointments and promotions and adhere to meritocracy.”

“We ought to give our deserving and hardworking city hall employees the security of tenure and all entitlements prescribed by the law. And we hope that this will motivate them to become more productive civil servants,” she added.