House Deputy Speaker and Batangas 6th district Rep. Ralph Recto has identified the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) as the agency that has the “the lowest regular staff-to-clientele ratio in the entire bureaucracy".

Figures cited by Recto in a statement said that the DSWD provides aid to about 61.6 million Filipinos considered indigent or vulnerable. This, despite the agency's workforce of only 2,993 regular workers.

“Never has so much been done for so many by so few,” Recto said on Tuesday, Aug. 23; he even described the DSWD as a big “ATM” Machine or an “ayuda at tulong (aid and help) machine” because of its P205-billion budget under the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA).

According to his calculations, the DSWD spends “4.5 centavos for every budget peso” in relation to personal compensation–a ratio lower than the Department of Education’s (DepEd) 81 percent, the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) 49 percent, and even the national government’s 28 percent share of “personnel services cost to total budget".

Recto further pointed out that much of the DSWD’s staff, as per a Commission on Audit (COA) report, were contractual workers--a “permanent band-aid” solution, as the deputy speaker puts it.

He noted that 13,252 DSWD employees were “contractuals"; 12,326 were under contracts of service; and that 878 were job order employees.

Thus, he urged the DSWD, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to expedite the regularization of qualified staff.

“Hindi na dapat ipa-Tulfo ‘yan kasi nandyan na si (It shouldn’t be ‘Tulfo’d’ anymore because the agency is already led by) Secretary Erwin , who, in the overall balance of things, has been doing a great job so far. I know he will champion the pleas of the deserving that their long service be rewarded with job regularization,” the lawmaker said.