More than 200,000 positions in the government remained vacant as of August, according to the Civil Service Commission (CSC) on Tuesday.

At the agency's budget hearing, CSC chairperson Karlo Nograles said there are 2,039,619 filled positions in the entire bureaucracy, comprising 1,846,597 employees in the career service and 193,022 in non-career service, respectively. 

The unfilled positions, meanwhile, stood at 203,079, although lower than last year's 204,000. 

Nograles ascribed the unfilled positions to the slow publication of job vacancies by the agencies' human resources (HR), which only provides blow-by-blow updates to the CSC every six months. 

"Different agencies obviously have their own HR offices. Their primary duty is to publish the vacancies. In other words, madam chair, your honors, it's really the job of the national agencies, local water districts, SUCs (state universities and colleges), local government units, to publish and fill up the vacancies," Nograles told the House Committee on Appropriations. 

"I think the HR of the agencies are not that quick to publish vacancies," he added. 

Nograles explained that a large number of "very good" job orders (JOs) and contract of service (CoS) could help fill the vacant posts, however, they could not do so due to lack of eligibility. 

"That's why the CSC came out with the preferential rating. This preferential rating, which we started in March of this year, we hope that by adding or giving bonus points for JOs and COs who work in the government but do not have eligibility, and because they do not have eligibility, they cannot apply for the plantilla positions, we hope that because of this, it will help in filling up the vacancies,"

CSC Resolution No. 2301123, which took effect last 12 February, stipulates that a preference rating of up to 10 points shall be added to the failed rating range (70 to 79.99) to obtain the passing rate of 80.00 for qualified applicants in Career Service Examinations (CSEs), enabling them to qualify for Career Service Professional or Subprofessional eligibility.

DBM Acting Assistant Director Lulu Vispo said one way to cut down the massive number of unfilled positions is for the CSC to adjust the qualification requirements and grant competitive salaries, which Nograles countered are already underway.

According to Nograles, the CSC is already in the final stages of inking a memorandum of agreement with the University of the Philippines-NCPAG to conduct a research study that will identify a large number of unfilled government positions, JOs, and COs.

In addition, he said the CSC has an upcoming digital project with the DBM, wherein they could monitor the unfilled posts in the different government agencies in real-time and how long they have been vacant. The project, which will be funded by the World Bank, is subject to approval by the National Economic and Development Authority board. 

"It will be a great help when we launch our CSC modernization project with DBM. It will give us visibility. It's a huge difference [if we could] monitor it every day, every week versus only every six months," Nograles said. 

It's an ambitious project, but I think if it is successful, then it will help us address this issue [why] there are so many vacancies in government because our monitoring of vacancies will be real-time," he added.

Meanwhile, Baguio City Rep. Mark Go and Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo both petitioned to discard "aging posts" or those positions in the government that have remained vacant for numerous years.

"Probably, if they have not been filled up for the last four to five years, that should be removed. If you require a position, let's say five years ago, and it has not been filled up, to me, you don't really need the job," Go said.

"If there are 20,000 (vacancies), that have been unfilled for 30 years, what does that mean? Let's eliminate that. Let's not put any effort into it. Because it only means, we don't need that. That's the easiest action. Perhaps, we don't know, maybe half of the 200,000 [vacant positions] has been unfilled for a long, long time," said Quimbo, the panel's senior vice chairperson. 

According to Quimbo, Congress could save a huge amount of funds if the government would "give up" some unfilled positions.