PHILIPPINE lawmakers should seek to expand the government bureaucracy to boost social and economic services instead of getting rid of obsolete positions since “rightsizing” would just weaken the delivery of public services, an economist said.
“The Rightsizing bill is similarly misguided and will just further reduce government capacity to provide services and productively intervene in the public interest,” IBON Foundation Executive Director Jose Enrique A. Africa said in a Viber message.
“The better direction is to assess public needs for social and economic services, identify the required government capacity for this and expand the existing bureaucracy to ensure this capacity,” he added.
Senate Bill No. 890, which seeks to do away with obsolete government positions, empowers the President to scale down agencies under the Executive branch.
Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian last week urged lawmakers and officials from the Budget department to conduct a cost-benefit study on rightsizing.
He noted that the power could be abused since the President removes people or agencies he doesn’t like.
Under the bill, Congress, the Judiciary, constitutional commissions, the Ombusdman and local governments may restructure their offices.
Affected state workers with five to 11 years of service would be entitled to half their monthly salary for every year of service.
But John Paolo R. Rivera, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, said cutting the bureaucracy would boost efficiency and reduce costs.
“Streamlining government operations and reducing the bureaucracy is essential for improving efficiency, cutting unnecessary costs and reallocating resources to critical sectors like education, healthcare and infrastructure,” he said Viber message.
Senate President Francis “Chiz” G. Escudero, who sponsored the measure before the plenary in December, said the measure would not necessarily downsize the government and remove employees but would also raise the quality of state services.
The House of Representatives passed a similar measure in March 2023 that seeks to form a committee on rightsizing that would review and study roles, functions and manpower levels of agencies in the Executive branch.
The Senate president and Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian earlier pushed to add a provision to the bill that would automatically create permanent positions for qualified contractual employees that have held job-order positions for decades.
The Budget department earlier said the savings from cutting the government bureaucracy would fund more priority infrastructure, social welfare and agriculture projects.
“The development question is not how to make the bureaucracy smaller but how to make it better and up to the many challenges of Philippine development,” Mr. Africa said. “The downsizing premise sugarcoated as rightsizing is arbitrary and mainly motivated by cutting on personnel expenses.” — John Victor D. Ordoñez
