President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. said he told members of his Cabinet to understand what they are doing and "how it all fits together."
In a press briefing after his first Cabinet meeting Tuesday, July 5, Marcos revealed that he ordered his Cabinet to streamline the bureaucracy and work on transitional matters soon so they could fully focus on more pressing matters.
If he had to single out one order he gave during the meeting, he said, it was to "get our bureaucracy streamlined."
"I said I give you relatively (a) free hand in deciding who you want to hire and how you want to change the structure of your department if indeed that's what you want to do but do it soon because we have work to do and we have to get to work immediately," he said.
"It’s important to me that the entire Cabinet understands what it is we are trying to do, how we are going to do it, what the timetable is, and how it all fits together. And that’s what we made a good start on today," Marcos said.
He said they were not able to cover everything during their four-hour meeting but were able to discuss pressing matters in education, economy, and transportation.
"We were there for four hours. But we still weren’t able to cover everything," he said.
The President said the economic team were able to "put out general principles that they would like to do."
During the meeting, Vice President Sara Duterte, who also serves as the Education Secretary, proposed the full resumption of face-to-face classes by November.
Marcos also revealed that they are mulling to extend the free ride project for students to support their return to face-to-face classes.
The President said they were not able to cover everything "simply because there was so much to talk about."
"I think essentially we got into much more details so there is no generalization anymore because we have been talking for two months, matagal na naming pinag-usapan yung mga (We have been talking about the) general concepts and general principles)," Marcos said.
He further said that they generally talked about how to implement the policies they have been discussing over the months and understand that every agency is interconnected.
The President is planning to meet his Cabinet twice a week consistently in the coming weeks until it is made clear to them how they will implement their plans.
His first Cabinet meeting came five days after being inaugurated as the country's 17th president.