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By Rea Cu, August 1 2018; Business Mirror
https://businessmirror.com.ph/government-agencies-told-fill-up-plantilla-positions-or-else/
Image Credit to Philippine Star
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) is poised to issue a circular next month directing all government agencies to fill up all vacant plantilla positions under their respective offices, or risk losing these unfilled positions altogether.
Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno told reporters during a news conference on Wednesday at the DBM headquarters in Manila that as of end-July this year, 264,000 authorized positions in the government have yet to be filled, with bulk of the unfilled positions being teaching related.
“I’ll issue the circular soon, maybe end of September is a good time to evaluate the need for these vacant positions,” Diokno said.
He explained that government positions that remain unfilled for a period of five years will be up for abolition.
“These are plantilla positions, they have been there, but they have remained unfilled, if you don’t fill this up I am going to abolish these positions,” he added.
DBM data showed that teaching or teaching-related positions account for 125,000 of the total unfilled government positions, followed by general service servants at around 90,000 vacancies, military and uniformed personnel with more than 34,000, as well as medical and allied medical jobs with around 14,000 vacant positions.
In terms of budget availability for these positions, Diokno explained that some of the budget are already with some agencies, while the rest can be sourced from the government’s miscellaneous personnel benefits fund.
“They were treated differently, teaching is already in the DepEd [department of Education] budget…but the rest are in the lump sum called the miscellaneous personnel benefits fund… We release the money upon actual hiring,” he said.
Diokno further explained that the DBM expects to create more positions for government employees in 2019 through the 2019 national budget, with around 10,000 new positions for teachers, 10,000 for policemen, 3,000 positions for firemen and 2,000 positions for jail officers.
Broken down by regions, the National Capital Region (NCR) has some 70,000 unfilled positions, Region 3 with 15,000, then Region 4A with 19,000, Region 5 with 14,000, Region 7 at 18,000, and Region 8 with 11,000 vacancies, according to the DBM.
He also encouraged Filipinos to take part in the government’s “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” caravan, which is slated to take place on August 12. Last month the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, as well as the Department of Transportation, also said it will be holding a job fair on August 12 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.