A Makabayan lawmaker is worried that the government’s rightsizing plans might end up causing massive layoffs, retrenchment, displacement, and on top of all that, worsen contractualization.
"The rightsizing of national government agencies is no different from the rationalization schemes of past administrations which caused untold damages to government workers and to public service," ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro said in a statement Friday, July 15.
"Instead of answering the just demand of government employees and workers for salary increase and regularization, government through rightsizing will only effect massive layoffs, retrenchment, and displacement, and worsen contractualization," she claimed.
The militant solon also belied that the Marcos administration’s aim to rightsize the bureaucracy won't affect teachers and healthcare workers
"They will be forced to shoulder tasks of education support personnel and support staff of health facilities," she noted.
"Through this proposal, government agencies will hire more and more personnel on contracts of service (COS) and job orders (JO) who will not be considered as government employees and will not be paid the salaries and job security as such," claimed Castro.
Castro, citing information from the Inventory of Government Human Resources, said there are 582,378 COS or JO personnel out of the 2,337,802 government employees as of Aug. 31, 2021.
The top agencies with the most number of JOs and COSs include the Department of Education (DepEd), Department of Health (DOH), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
"The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) already knows that this proposal (rightsizing) will affect two million government employees. The agency wants to save P14 billion in exchange for the jobs and security of tenure of two million Filipinos that would be affected by this proposal," Castro said.