Ombudsman: Top-heavy management tied my hands in reorganization

MANILA, Philippines — Ombudsman Samuel Martires yesterday confirmed that his office has indeed been top-heavy, but clarified that he inherited such when he assumed office in July 2018, which, unfortunately, tied his hands in reorganizing the independent constitutional body.

“Our office hierarchy was entirely messed up. I just inherited the present organizational structure. I am in a ‘damned if you do, (damned) if you don’t’ situation,” Martires said.

The former Supreme Court and Sandiganbayan justice was referring to the 2020 Audit Observation Memorandum of the Commission on Audit (COA) that unraveled the confusion in the pay scale and rank or positions of personnel, where 64 percent of employees have been occupying “high-level positions” since at least 2017.

Martires’ predecessor was Conchita Carpio-Morales, who was appointed in July 2011.

“I agree with the report of the COA, and this situation is the one giving us nightmares in our reorganization plan,” Martires said, noting that the Office of the Ombudsman needs an “overhaul,” but employees will definitely be severely affected, one way or another.

“If I wanted to fix this at the soonest time possible, the easiest is to abolish the office. But this can never be,” he added, underscoring that entry levels for lawyers had in fact been changed – for reasons known only to his predecessors – at least one notch higher.

Martires explained that if the Office of the Ombudsman were a private firm, it would be very easy for him to abolish some top positions and just give the officers their separation pay in accordance with the Labor Code, without anybody questioning him.

“This top-heavy structure will continue,” he said. “I am creating new bureaus and plan to hire additional lawyers, so the position titles and the salary grades that we will offer these lawyers will be the same as those of the incumbent.”

One classic problem he cited was the overall deputy ombudsman post – the second highest in rank next to him – but which, ironically, has the same salary and benefits with deputy ombudsmen, which should be one rank lower from the ODO.

“Would you believe that the salary and allowances of the Overall Deputy Ombudsman is the same as the Deputy Ombudsman? Why did we have to create such laws when the position of ODO and Deputy Ombudsman are one and the same?” Martires asked.

COA auditors discovered the distortion of rank-and-pay scale among ombudsman workers.

“Our analysis of the ombudsman’s workforce for core positions based on the actual headcount, depicted an inverted pyramid, which is an opposite of the traditional workforce setup, be it in a private company or a government entity,” the auditors said.

In a 20-page Audit Observation Memorandum led by Florence Villaluz and officer-in-charge supervising auditor Joey Bernardino, the team noticed “mismatches and imbalance workforce” in the way the office has been handled, at least as far back as 2017 records are concerned.