With just an extensive policy decision involving personnel in the Executive department, President Bongbong Marcos made more than 800,000 government workers happy and incentivized to perform and render their level best by way of public service.
In a sectoral meeting in Malacañang last Wednesday, the President extended the engagement of contract of service (COS) and job order (JO) workers in government whose contracts will expire in December this year. At the meeting were Cabinet members from the Department of Budget and Management, Department of Interior and Local Government, Civil Service Commission and Commission on Audit.
The Chief Executive also instructed government agencies to develop the skills and capabilities of COS and JO workers by reeducating and training them with the help of higher learning institutions and enabling them to pass the civil service examination.
Beneficiaries of this move by the President are the COS and JO workers in five national government agencies employing the most number of such employees. Of course, thousands more JO’s working in other departments are also included.
The top five national government agencies with the highest number of COS and JO workers include the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), 29,275; Department of Health (DOH), 18,264; Department of Education (DepEd), 15,143; Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), 13,770; and Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), 10,990.
COS refers to the engagement of the services of an individual, private firm, other government agency, non-government agency, or international organization as a consultant, learning service provider or technical expert to undertake a special project or job within a specific period.
JO, on the other hand, refers to piece work (pakyaw), intermittent or emergency jobs to be undertaken for a short duration and for a specific piece of job.
This move in government service is timely because the expiration of the transitional period on December 31, 2024 is near, and COS and JO workers handling various government projects and performing regular functions are at risk of losing their jobs. There is no greater worry for an ordinary laborer than to lose one’s job at year’s end, especially during the Christmas-New Year holidays. What a way to start the year 2025 without the usual sources of livelihood.
The Chief Executive said his administration’s goal is to build a pool of government workers that can perform and qualify for government’s plantilla positions. In addition, the President wanted the agencies to conduct a thorough study of the current state of the government workforce, including the COS and JOs.
As of June 30 last year, 29.68 percent (832,812) of the government workforce were COS and JO workers, a 29.71-percent increase from 2022. The Civil Service Commission and the Commission on Audit allowed government agencies to reassess their organizational and staffing requirements by extending the transitional period for the hiring of COS and JO workers until the end of the year, which is Dec. 31, 2024.
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