A lawmaker was surprised to learn from Social Welfare and Development Secretary Rex Gatchalian that his agency has 10 undersecretaries and 21 assistant secretaries.
In discussing the DSWD’s P207 billion budget for 2024, House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro asked how many senior officials there are in the department.
“Yes, there are 10 Usecs (undersecretaries) and 20 Asecs (assistant secretaries), and we are in the process of streamlining. We seek the indulgence of the Office of the President and the good congresswoman as we realign the functions of the department,” Gatchalian said.
“Let me also point out that the department used to have 11 Usecs, and these were funded and went through proper process. But then again, we are streamlining and realigning our function to see to it that we are compliant with the provisions on the mandate of the department,” added the secretary.
According to Castro, instead of hiring senior officials, the DSWD should increase their field workers, such as social workers.
“Nabigla lang ako na 10 Usecs and 20 Asecs, as this is the only agency with such huge number of Asecs and Usecs. In terms of size, DepEd is a bigger agency,” he said. “In my view, it would be better to invest on the people on the ground, the social workers.”
Gatchalian explained that although streamlining is necessary for the DSWD, he clarified that there is a lot of work in the department with 34,000 workers.
DSWD has 10 Usecs, 20 Asecs – Gatchalian
“We manage 34,000 employees, we manage a lot of grants and we run multiple programs. Yes, we are working on streamlining, but if we take into account these details, we run a very big bureaucracy,” he said.
Gatchalian also said that they are working on the regularization of job orders and contracts of service workers.
“Around 65%…a big chunk of our workforce are contract of service, and we continue to make representations with the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) to make sure that our employees become regular,” the secretary said.
“We understand that we have a tight fiscal space kaya hindi lahat ng request napagbibigyan. We get some from time to time, and we will continue to strive to provide them security of tenure. We sympathize with them and we continue to work on that notion,” he added.
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