The Court of Appeals (CA) gave two education officials in Abra the chance to correct their ways by modifying the dismissal order handed down by the Civil Service Commission in January last year for allowing two “ghost employees” to draw their salaries from the DepEd while being employed in other offices.

Finding the penalty of dismissal “too harsh and restrictive” considering their length of service in government and this being their first offense, the Special Fifteenth Division of the CA in a decision written by Associate Justice Noel G. Tijam suspended Servelina B. Gonzales and Josephine R. Viado without pay and benefits for a period of six months for grave misconduct.

At the time the offense was discovered in 1996, Gonzales and Viado was the principal and administrative officer, respectively of Cristina B. Gonzales Memorial High School in Abra.

The regional office of the CSC in the Cordillera Adminsitrative Region discovered during a personnel audit that the said school included in its plantilla two persons – Rosario B. Molina and Florante A. Zapata as casual laborers while concurrently serving in other government offices in violation of CSC rules and regulations.

Molina’s service card showed that he worked for the school and the local government at the same time from 1993 to 1995. Zapata’s service card, on the other hand showed that he was employed with a regional trial court in Bucay, Abra while at the same time working for the school.