THE National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) is rightsizing the agency’s personnel structure through a memorandum order after President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to remove all holdover officials from the previous administration.
In a statement, NAPC chairman Liza Maza said the restructuring will fix the “swollen bureaucracy” hired during her predecessor Joel Rocamora’s time.
“These consultants in oversized quantity were being paid about P5.8 million a month over a nine-month period by the former administration of the NAPC. Total fees paid to consultants alone had been approximately P43.5 million or about 36 percent of the NAPCs annual budget,” Maza said.
Documents obtained by the Manila Standard revealed some 151 consultants and 82 people under contract were paid more than P3.4 million over a nine-month period under the Aquino administration, “more than double the total organic internal staff of the agency which is only 50.”
Maza said these were far larger, with the final number being 161 consultants distributed by former NAPC administration to all units and various projects of the commission, and paid monthly or in tranches.
Some consultants were paid from as low as P25,000 a month while others received as much as P540,000 in tranches within the period, averaging about P5.8 million a month.
“This is an insult to NAPC’s mandate to serve the interest of the poor,” she said.
“[This] is why we are terminating the services of 155 of these consultants whose number became bloated particularly in the last six years, with equally bloated compensation package.”
Maza has already issued memorandas cancelling the services of 82 out of a total 107 contract of service (COS) personnel, noting that their number and compensation had extremely swelled parallel with the consultants.
Maza said she is pursuing options for regularizing contractual employees who have efficiently served the agency.