Senate pressed to act on rightsizing bill

The Senate has been pressed to take action on the pending proposed measure that seeks to rightsize the government bureaucracy, which the House of Representatives passed earlier this year.

Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte, one of the proponents of the bill, made the call on Tuesday, pressing his co-lawmakers in the Senate to pass the counterpart of House Bill 7240, or "The National Government Rightsizing Act," upon the 19th Congress reconvene on 22 January after a month-long Christmas break.

Senator Imee Marcos filed a counterpart of the House-approved bill in the Senate, but it remains pending at the committee level as of 5 May 2023.

The House-approved bill, which hurdled the chamber in March, gives the President the authority to cut down the government workforce, agencies, departments, bureaus, offices, commissions, boards, councils and other entities attached to the Executive branch per Section 6 of the proposal.

The National Government Rightsizing Program, a policy directive of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in his first State of the Nation Address, seeks to streamline national government agencies through regularization, merging, restructuring, abolition, or transfer of government agencies to establish a more efficient bureaucracy.

In layman's term, it grants the President the power to eliminate redundant, duplicate, and overlapping functions in the executive branch.

Citing the 2022 report of the Civil Service Commission, Villafuerte said the Philippines has about 1.7 million workers who are spread across 187 government agencies and GOCCs that have functions that either overlap or are redundant.

"As Personnel Services take almost 30 percent of the national budget annually, rightsizing the government will surely lead to the appropriate utilization of the State's financial resources," Villafuerte said.

The three-member Makabayan bloc previously expressed concern that the proposal would only lead to government employees losing their jobs.

However, Villafuerte reiterated that teachers, healthcare providers, soldiers and other uniformed personnel are exempted from the House-approved plan to rightsize the bureaucracy.

 Back in April, Mr. Marcos assured that the proposal would not be centered on terminating employees but rather on serving as a tool to upskill and reskill the current government workforce to improve state services and initiatives as he ordered a further assessment of the present set-up in the executive branch to determine redundant positions as well as functions that could be merged.

Both the Departments of Finance and Budget and Management had expressed full support to the proposal, claiming rightsizing the national government is in line with its efforts to make the bureaucracy more effective and efficient while enabling them to direct public spending towards social services, human capital development, and infrastructure.

Since taking office in June last year, Mr. Marcos has already abolished several state-run agencies through executive orders, such as the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission, the Office of the Cabinet Secretary, and the One-Stop-Shop Inter-Agency Credit and Duty Drawback Center under the Department of Finance.