CSC: 30% of gov’t workers face layoff

The government could reduce its 1.4-million-strong workforce by as much as 30 percent under a rationalization scheme now awaiting official approval, the civil service chief said yesterday.

The program, worked out by the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Budget and Management, needs to be approved by the President and Congress but has been delayed by the May 10 general elections, CSC Chairman Karina David said.

"This rationalization program is something that would on the immediate basis reduce the bureaucracy by 10 percent," David told Agence France Presse.

"I would think that over the next five years, the reduction could be as high as 30 percent," if key provisions in the program are approved by Congress, she said.

Multilateral institutions and foreign banks have long called for a reduction in the government workforce, saying this is needed to control the chronic budget deficit problems.

The government has committed to reduce its deficit this year to P197.8 billion despite the possibility of higher-than-programmed spending amid rising oil prices and interest rates.

However, US investment bank Bear Stearns and Co. says Manila has been resorting to "deferring payments to (government) contractors to keep within its deficit targets for the first half of 2004."

David said reducing the budget deficit was not the main justification for cutting the work force.

"I am not a believer of sacrificing people because we have money problems," she said.

"This is basically an issue of rationalization and efficiency," David stressed, although she conceded that a smaller, more efficient work force would result in greater government savings.

"At this point in time, government has grown to such an extent that we are no longer doing the vital and core services. We have expanded into areas that are quasi-governmental and even private sector in nature," she said.

Technological advances, particularly in information technology, had also made a leaner work force more practical, David said, stressing the government’s armies of clerical workers could be reduced with computerization.

Under the proposed plan, each government agency would go through a rationalization scheme which would identify its vital services as well as the workers who are redundant or who are not performing vital services.

Such non-vital and redundant workers would be offered early retirement or the option of being moved to "frontline agencies" that deal directly with the public like the departments of Education or Health.

"I assume that everybody in their 50s onwards will opt for early retirement," David said, stressing no one would be fired outright.

Estimates showed the cost of paying for early retirement packages would be made up within two years from the savings of a leaner workforce, she said.

While parts of the scheme can be carried out by the administration, congressional approval is needed for the second phase of the program which would consider whether agencies created by law could be altered or done away with, David said.

The third phase of the program would involve government agencies replacing only half of the people who retire each year to further boost efficiency and save money.

David did not have an estimate on how much the rationalization program would cost or how much it might save in the long run, saying this would depend on each agency.

In the past, efforts to cut the country’s bureaucracy have been opposed by civil service groups, leftist organizations and even some legislators but David said the plan had been reviewed by various agencies and approved by legal experts.

The congressional sponsors of the program "were very positive about it," and that only lack of time before elections prevented it from being passed so far, she said. — AFP