By The SUN
More than a month since Labor Attache Jalilo dela Torre was
booted out of his Hong Kong post and told to move to Riyadh, a replacement for him has yet to be named.
Reports coming out of the Department of Labor and Employment
(DOLE) in Manila
suggest Secretary Silvestre Bello III is still choosing from four likely
candidates.
These negate reports lawyer Fidel Macauyag, who currently
heads the country’s labor office in Taichung,
Taiwan, has
already secured the post.
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| Usudan says the DFA has to give consent to the appointment of a new labor attache |
Both the Philippine Overseas Labor Office and the Consulate
deny the report.
The Consulate’s acting head of post, Germinia Usudan, said the Department of Foreign Affairs has not been told a new labor attaché for Hong Kong has been named.
Usudan said that under the “one country team approach”, DOLE
has to send an appointment memorandum naming the new appointee to the DFA for
concurrence. Once the DFA approves, the Consulate is informed.
“Kapag in-appoint siya ni Secretary Bello, kino-convey siya
sa DFA. Tapos, out of courtesy lang, pinapadala siya (the memo) sa post and
then we say if we have objection or no objection,” Usudan said.
“Usually, pag wala namang information or any derogatory
record, we say no objection. Pero we have not received (the memo), wala pa,”
she said.
This was the same statement given earlier by Polo’s
officer-in-charge Antonio Villafuerte.
“Wala pa pong request for acceptance,” he told The SUN in a
text message.
Meanwhile, Dela Torre has returned to the Philippines and taken a month-long
leave of absence. He is said to be still mulling whether to proceed to Riyadh or file for early
retirement.
A last-minute bid to get him retained in Hong
Kong was circulated and signed by big Filipino community
organizations just before he left on July 31, which cited the current unrest in
the city due to the massive anti-extradition bill protests as reason.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo reportedly agreed to
take up the petition directly with President Rodrigo Duterte, but there has
been no word so far on whether he has actually done this.
Apart from Macauyag, the others named as being in the
running for the labor attaché post are: Ramon Pastrana, former labatt in Macau,
and incumbents Nasser Munder in Jeddah and Cesar Chavez in the Manila Economic
and Cultural Office
Labor Center
in Taipei.
Although Macauyag is widely reported to be favored by Bello, he may not have an
easy time getting DFA’s approval because he has a pending case before the Ombudsman.
Macauyag was with the Office of the Prosecutor General
before he was named as one of Dole’s eight new attaches in 2017. He was
originally assigned to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia,
but after a few months was moved to Taichung,
the second largest city of Taiwan.
A Dole insider said this was because officials assigned to Taiwan do not need a clearance from the Ombudsman
as the Philippines
does not have a diplomatic post there, only a trade and cultural office.
Previous to his OPG job, Macauyag was city prosecutor for
nine years in Cagayan de Oro City where he was linked to a case fixing scandal.
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