MAYNILA. Umabot na sa mahigit 832,000 ang mga contractual employees sa gobyerno, ayon sa Department of Budget and Management (DBM). Sa budget deliberations para sa panukalang P6.32-trillion na budget para sa 2025 sa Senate finance sub-committee, sinabi ni DBM Secretary Amenah Pangandaman na “The bulk of this number of contract of service and job order workers in the government are in the local government units at 580,323 or 69.68% as of June 30, 2023.”
Ang natitirang bahagi ng mga contractual employees ay nakatalaga sa mga sumusunod na sektor:
- National government agencies: 173,227 o 20.8%
- State universities and colleges: 44,168 o 5.3%
- Government-owned and -controlled corporations: 28,667 o 3.44%
- Local water districts: 6,427 o 0.77%
Tinukoy ni Senator Joel Villanueva, chairman ng Senate Committee on Labor, ang pangangailangan na masusing tugunan ang mataas na bilang ng mga contractual workers at ang isyu ng maraming ‘unfilled positions’ sa gobyerno. Ayon kay Villanueva, “I trust the secretary to take a lead on this because it’s been a while. We talked about this last year, and unfortunately, there are still many agencies that are not responding to our calls.”
Sa kanyang tugon, nagbigay ng pangako si Pangandaman na magpapalabas ang DBM at Civil Service Commission ng joint circular na mag-uutos sa lahat ng ahensiya na magsumite ng kanilang mga posisyon para sa reclassification at lahat ng unfilled positions upang makapaglaan ng budget na naaayon. “The DBM and Civil Service can publish a circular of sorts to really encourage, across the board, all agencies, to reclassify and fill out their [unfilled] positions. Because not all agencies request this,” paliwanag ni Pangandaman.
Dagdag pa niya, “One of the things we are looking at for the circular is that for positions which have been left unfilled for more than 10 years, maybe we can scrap it and reclassify it, and create new positions.”
Hiniling ni Villanueva na asahan ang mga pangako ni Pangandaman, ngunit binalaan niyang “Unfortunately, the improvement has been so slow. Because it is very hard to push for an end to contractualization, asking the private sector to get away or reject the idea of end of contract [after every six months], and yet the government is the number one violator. That would be tough.”
Sinabi rin ni Pangandaman na may mga ahensiya nang nagsasagawa ng ‘restructuring at reclassification’ ng posisyon at nangakong magsusumite siya ng listahan ng komite.
Carlo Juancho FuntanillaFrontend Developer, WordPress, Shopify
Contributing Editor
AMA ACLC San Pablo
