COCKTALES | Empowered by GMA, PNoy proceeds with thousands of job cuts in government agencies

By: Victor C. Agustin

The inclusive-growth mantra of the PNoy administration won't be trickling down this year or next among the ranks of firemen, meat inspectors, agriculture, agrarian reform, sweepstakes, immigration and computer personnel within the civil service.

Their ranks are being thinned by Malacanang through an executive order issued way back in 2004 by the demonized Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to "rationalize" the target, supposedly bloated, agencies.

On November 8, just as supertyphoon Yolanda was blasting the Visayas, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad signed a set of administrative orders, using the past president's EO 366 as legal basis, mandating thousands of personnel cuts within the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Fire Protection and the National Meat Inspection Service.

In all, the agriculture department will lose 1,919 permanent positions after Abad approved the reduction in the staffing complement to 7,229 positions from the current 9,138.

Even without the rationalization plan, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala had already scaled down the hiring of permanent personnel from the 7,552 in 2010, during the change in administration, to only 6,581 this year.

The fire protection agency itself will lose 174 permanent positions from the current 541, even though there are only 511 permanent staff currently in its payroll.

The meat inspection agency, in turn, has been ordered to reduce its permanent staff positions by 34.

The Department of Agrarian Reform is also underway with the so-called "RatPlan," pruning the 15,106 plantilla positions down to 9,322.

Over at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, the union has even gone to court in a desperate effort to stop chairman Margarita Juico from laying off personnel whose positions will be deemed redundant.

And despite the record number of foreign investors and increased flights, the Bureau of Immigration, after an initial hiring spurt, is now being asked to reverse and trim its permanent positions from 1,424 to only 1,036.

Despite the reduced headway, Immigration Commissioner Siegfred Mison still has room to hire 147 more since the bureau only had 899 permanents at the latest count.

The latest job reductions came after Abad, by the authority of President Aquino, earlier this year slashed a whopping 5,930 positions within the Information and Communications Technology Office, leaving only 785 permanent positions within the decimated agency.

Even without the painful rationalization plan, key front-line offices have already seen their personnel reduced since 2010.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, despite more Filipinos being hired overseas, saw its permanent staff shrink to 351 this year from 392 in 2010.

Even the vocational training agency Tesda, headed by staunch PNoy ally Joel Villanueva, could not fill up its 4,366 permanent positions, employing only 3,482, itself already down from the 2010 level of 3,720.

Pouring billions more into the Department of Health likewise did not translate into higher permanent employment.

Health Secretary Enrique Ona saw his budget double to P50 billion this year from 2010 but the so-called plantilla personnel actually shrank this year to 24,888 from 25,476, according to records with the Department of Budget and Management.

The jobless growth was also felt ironically within PNoy's favorite agency, Pagasa, despite the weather forecasters receiving what was supposed to have been a substantial salary increase from the present administration.

The weather bureau's permanent employees managed to inch up by only three in the last three years, leaving 162 positions still unfilled.

Its sister agency, Philvocs, was worse off, with the seismology office cratered by the loss of six permanent colleagues whose vacancies remained unfilled.

And with comic irony, the Commission on Population saw its office population shrivel to 254 from 304 in 2010 while hardly making a dent on the growth of poor Filipinos.

The same can be said with the National Nutrition Council, which lost seven percent of its permanent body fat in the span of three years.

On a positive note, the two main revenue-raising agencies, Customs and BIR, have been making do with fewer and fewer permanent personnel while raising more and more revenues.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue lost 1,106 staffers and the Customs bureau another 410 in three years, their vacancies unfilled, as the attrition took effect.

The prosecutorial zeal of PNoy and Secretary Leila de Lima, meanwhile, translated to the hiring of 28 more lawyers and legal staff within the Department of Justice.

And the liberation of the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel from the salary standardization straitjacket has enabled the agency to attract eight more permanents, something that cannot be said of the Office of Solicitor-General, which lost 69 permanent staffers, adding to the 282 unfilled positions it already had in 2010.

Agencies literally close to Malacanang and whose heads have personal ties to the pre-presidential PNoy also seem immune from the pressure to hold the line on personnel hiring.

Secretary Julia Abad of the Presidential Management Staff and daughter of the budget chief has managed to bulk up her permanent staff by 71, representing an almost 27 percent growth in three years.

The younger Abad now has 335 permanent staffers as against the 264 she inherited in 2010. Her father, meanwhile, practiced what he preached, cutting down the permanent staff in the budget department by 72.

The resurgent Malacanang spokesman, Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr., also contributed to job generation by hiring five permanents in his office and another 18 at the Philippine Information Agency.

A former political detainee turned government bureaucrat, Joel Rocamora, also did his bit to spread his brand of socialism, adding two more permanent staffers within his empire, the National Anti-Poverty Commission.


Email Vic Agustin at cocktales_tv5@yahoo.com

http://www.interaksyon.com/business/76489/cocktales--empowered-by-gma-pnoy-proceeds-with-thousands-of-job-cuts-in-government-agencies