LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – Three more non-uniformed personnel (NUP) of the Police Regional Office–Cordillera (PRO-COR) recently appealed to the Civil Service Commission (CSC) central office an earlier decision dismissing them from the service for alleged grave misconduct for being alleged members of informal settlers inside the compound of the regional headquarters.
In their joint notice of appeal to the CSC, the appellants prayed that the CSC dismiss the compliant for grave misconduct against them for utter lack of merit, directing the PRO-COR to reinstate them to their former positions without loss of security rights and benefits and such other reliefs just and equitable.
The appellants claimed that despite dutifully submitting their counter-affidavits and answers opposing the complaint of grave misconduct on them as they stated that they are not the builders, claimants or the owners of the residential structures being questioned that caused them to be so disconnected in their work, they were nevertheless dismissed from the service via the decisions rendered by the PRO-COR.
The appellants argued that the PRO-COR committed grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack of or in excess of jurisdiction erred in finding and declaring them to be members of informal settler families or of a professional squatter syndicate and terminating them from the service for grave misconduct for supposedly being members of informal settler families or of a professional quarter syndicate.
According to them, the PRO-COR has no cause of action against them as it is basic in law and procedure that in order for a compliant of misconduct to prosper under the CSC law, the act complained of must directly relate to or is in connection with the performance of the public officer’s official duties, thus, jurisprudence defines simple and grave misconduct as a transmission of some established and definite rule of action, more particularly, unlawful behavior of gross negligence by the public officer.
Further, to warrant dismissal from the service, the misconduct must be grave, serious, important, weighty, momentous and not trifling and that the misconduct must imply wrongful intention and not mere error of judgement and must also have a direct relation to and be connected with the performance of the public officer’s official duties amounting either to maladministration or willful, intentional neglect, or failure to discharge the duties of the office.
The appellants argued that the PRO-COR was wrong to charge and terminate them for grave misconduct as there was no valid or legal basis to do so and it was bad enough that the complaint did not mention any tiny job-related act of misconduct, must less, grave at that, worst, the PRO-COR was not even presented to testify on the complaint and that the same was even represented by a junior officer who allegedly anomalously acted as the complainant and prosecutor rolled into one.
Moreover, the appellants were terminated from employment only because the indicated place of residence happened to be their parents’ homes inside the headquarters, no more, no less. And that the same are products of complaint’s malicious and cruel mind concocting, illogical, ridiculous and senseless and dangerous supposition. By HENT