Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman (File photo)
MANILA – The proposed rightsizing of the bureaucracy would help address the long-standing issue on unfilled positions in the government, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said Tuesday.
This came as Pangandaman renewed the call for the passage of the National Government Rightsizing Program (NGRP) bill, which is a priority measure of the Marcos administration to streamline and modernize government systems.
Pangandaman said the NGRP bill is an integral tool in the effort to fill up vacant plantilla positions by job order (JO) and contract of service (COS) workers in the government.
“The NGRP can lead to the reclassification of positions to fill up vacant posts in the government to ensure optimal use of manpower resources across the bureaucracy,” she said in a statement released by the DBM.
During the Senate Committee on Finance’s hearing on the DBM's budget on Monday, Pangandaman expressed hope that the NGRP bill would be passed into law this year.
Pangandaman said the measure would also fix the positions in government by doing reclassifications within departments and agencies across the national government.
She said the reclassification of positions is key to filling up vacant posts in the government.
“Ang overarching goal naman po dito ay magkaroon ng burukrasya na agile at responsive, Lalo na sa makabagong panahon. Ayaw naman po natin ng gobyerno na masyadong bloated tapos hindi naman po maganda ang serbisyo. Sayang ang pera ng taumbayan (The overarching goal here is to have a bureaucracy that is agile and responsive, especially in modern times. We don't want a government that is too bloated and then the service is not good. That’s a waste of people's money),” Pangandaman said.
“We will do this by determining which among the government agencies may be streamlined, and which among them need to be strengthened," she added.
The NGRP aims to promote a lean, efficient, and responsive government workforce by streamlining the agency operations, rightsizing their organizational structure and workforce complement, improving interoperability in government agencies, and eliminating functions, programs, and projects that are redundant, overlapping, or no longer necessary.
The bill would streamline national government agencies through regularization, merging, restructuring, abolition, or transfer of government agencies to create a more efficient bureaucracy. (PNA)
