Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian has said the agency is not seeking to expand its workforce in terms of number of employees, but is pushing for more plantilla positions to ensure continuity in implementing its programs and services.
“I think if we were to plead the committee, it is not the number of employees that we are going to ask for but it is the type of employees we are going to ask for. This runs across the different programs,”
Gatchalian told the Senate Finance Sub-committee chaired by Senator Pia Cayetano during the budget hearing on the proposed 2026 DSWD budget on Wednesday.
The DSWD chief’s statement was in response to the inquiry of Senator Loren Legarda on the lack of DSWD implementers in programs such as the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP), which often involved contract of service (COS) personnel.
Gatchalian said the challenge was not simply the absence of workers but the type of personnel available.
“There’s always this misunderstanding of employees. Marami po kami. We have 39,000 employees out of 43,000, but it’s the type of employees that we need,” Gatchalian said.
The DSWD chief explained that while the programs of the DSWD come with administrative costs, these often only allow the hiring of contractual workers.
“But the admin cost is only good for contract of service. It’s not the type of employee that we need. We need regular, warm body employees — plantilla positions — so that can ensure continuity, especially for SLP that is heavy in social preparation and monitoring,” Gatchalian explained.
The DSWD chief pointed out that COS personnel, despite being competent, tend to leave when better opportunities arise, resulting in loss of institutional knowledge.
Under the 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP), the budget of the DSWD and its attached and supervised agencies is over Php223.2 billion.
