Solon: Gov't jobs unfilled for 4 years should be scrapped

House Committee on Appropriations Senior Vice Chairperson and Marikina Representative Stella Quimbo said on Tuesday that government positions that continue to be unfilled even after four to five years should be scrapped.

“We need to have more data on this. What is really the reason why these positions are yet to be filled in? You can look at all the unfilled positions and find out the actual reasons or reasons why. And probably, if they have not been filled in for the last five years, four years, eh dapat tanggalin na ‘yan,” said Quimbo during the proposed 2025 Civil Service Commission (CSC) budget deliberations.

“Hindi na dapat ilagay na mga position [‘yang aging unfilled positions.] If you required that position, let’s say, five years ago, and it has not been filled up... to me, you don't really need the job or that position,” Quimbo added.

During the deliberations, CSC Chairperson Karlo Nograles revealed that there were around 203,000 unfilled government positions, several of which had been vacant for five years.

Acting Director Lulu Vispo of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), in response, identified the lack of qualified personnel as one of the major reasons for so many unfilled positions in government.

“Agencies really have a hard time filling in due to qualification requirements, and also, due to low salary. More often, they (government agencies) will hire service worker contracts because permanent plantilla positions require CSC examination passers,” Vispo said.

Nograles said the matter would be addressed by the pending CSC digitization project with DBM. The project will enable the agencies to monitor the number of unfilled positions in real-time, subsequently ensuring that agencies fulfill their promises of filling them as soon as possible.

This project, however, would be presented to the National Economic Development Authority board on Wednesday and the earliest time for it to be ready would be next year.

“This will really be the game changer. As it is, we only get updated [on the list of unfilled positions] every six months," Nograles said.

Quimbo, however, said that pending the “game-changing” project, the CSC in coordination with DBM should submit a list of aging unfilled positions.

“How many positions are unfilled for 10 years? Twenty years? You should give us that data. Regardless of the reason, we will see there is among the 200,000 unfilled positions, there are unfilled positions for 30 years. What does that mean? We should remove that for good and not waste an effort to fill that out. Because that amount of time of it being unfilled tells us that we don’t need that position,” Quimbo said.

“That would be the most immediate action,” Quimbo added.

Both the CSC and DBM agreed to comply with Quimbo’s recommendation. — DVM, GMA Integrated News