AN official of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) yesterday said the government should consider either filling up the more than 100,000 vacant positions in different agencies or simply abolish them, if possible.
During the “Laging Handa” public briefing, CSC Commissioner Aileen Lizada said: “There are more or less 100 plus thousand vacant or unfilled positions in the government bureaucracy. Baka puwede hong unang tingnan iyon kasi walang tao, pero bakit hanggang ngayon ay unfilled pa po sila. Bakit hindi pini-fill up ng mga ibang government agencies?
Baka puwede na hong i-abolish (There are more or less 100 plus thousand vacant or unfilled positions in the government bureaucracy. Maybe we could look at why it is unfilled.
Why are they still not filled up? Maybe we could abolish them).
Lizada made statement amid concerns raised by employees under contract of service (COS) or job orders (JOs) that they may be affected by planned the rightsizing of the Marcos administration.
Lizada said instead of hiring more employees under the COS and JOs, the vacant positions should be filled up first.
If these positions are found to be redundant or duplicative, they could be abolished, she also said.
There have been suggestions to hire COS and JO employees to fill up the vacant positions if they are qualified.
The Department of Budget and Management said all 187 offices and government owned or controlled corporations, with a two million workforce, will be affected by its ongoing review of the functions of government offices.
Lizada said it is hard to say how many employees will really be affected by the streamlining of the bureaucracy, but under the “rightsizing” done during the Duterte administration, 44,771 positions were dissolved in 162 agencies.
