Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III on Thursday asked lawmakers to increase the Department of Labor's budget to enable the agency to hire more labor inspectors.
Attending the department's budget hearing at the House of Representatives, Bello said the agency has only about 800 labor inspectors tasked to examine the compliance to labor laws of more than 900,000 business establishments.
“We badly need more funds to hire labor law compliance officers if we are expected to implement the labor standards and labor laws. We wanted to hire 2,000 [labor inspectors] but this was turned down by the DBM [Department of Budget and Management],” Bello told lawmakers in the budget hearing conducted by the House committee on appropriations, chaired by Davao City Rep. Karlo Nograles.
“We need enough funds to hire more labor law compliance officers. We will appreciate if we get that support from Congress,” he added.
The department was allocated P13.371 billion in the proposed 2019 national government budget. This is 16.38 percent higher than its cash-based budget equivalent of P11.489 billion in 2018.
For next year, budget for personnel services under the department's Office of the Secretary will amount to P2.51 billion.
Last April, DoLE released a list of companies allegedly using illegal contracting sevices.
From June 2016 to April 2018, DoLE inspected only 99,526 business establishments owing to manpower constraints.
Party-list Rep. Carlos Zarate of Bayan Muna agreed with Bello, but pointed out that about 15 percent of the approved regular positions in the department remains unfilled. Maricel V. Cruz
In 2017, there were 2,550 approved positions for DoLE, but there were only 2,211 filled positions. In 2018 and 2019, the approved was at 2,651, but only 2,228 were part of the department's staff.
Zarate asked Bello why the approved positions were not all filled.
Bello explained that civil service requirements limit them from filling up vacancies.
“There are vacant items because before we fill up these vacant positions, we have to wait for the Civil Service Commission on the promotion [of the present office holders]. That usually takes no less than six months,” said Bello.