Government workers assured: No mass layoff
Only 10,000 to 20,000 workers will be affected. Teachers, health workers not included in rightsizing program.
The bill seeking to rightsize government would not lead to “firing, mass layoff, or downsizing” of state workers, the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations assured on Tuesday.
In a press conference, committee chair Karlo Alexei Nograles of Davao said the rightsizing program does not necessarily mean that government employees will immediately lose their jobs.
He said those who will be affected will have the option to be placed under a training pool to retool and retrain them for deployment to another government office. Another option is a separation package offered by the government through the rightsizing bill.
Of the 1.6 million government employees, Nograles noted that only about 10,000 to 20,000 will be affected by the government rightsizing program.
“Now, with the 200,000 state workers that will allegedly be affected (by the program), not all of them will be affected. If ever, about 5 to 10 percent of the said number will really be affected by the rightsizing,” he said.
“This is not firing out. This is not mass layoff. This is not downsizing. We are just correcting the bureaucracy to make it leaner and trimmer, thus making delivery of public service more efficient,” he added.
In anticipation of the enactment of the proposed Rightsizing the National Government Act, Nograles said some P10 billion was allotted for its initial implementation under the proposed 2018 budget.
For his part, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno assured law- makers that teachers and health workers will not be affected by the rightsizing program.
Last week, the lower chamber approved House Bill 5707, also known as the “Rightsizing the National Government Act,” covering all agencies of the executive branch to rightsize the ballooning bureaucracy in order to improve the delivery of public service.
President Rodrigo Duterte in his second State of the Nation Address on Monday called for the immediate passage of the Rightsizing Bill.