DOLE admits difficulty in accounting for contractual workers

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on Wednesday admitted its difficulty in accounting for the contractual employees in the country due to its lack of labor law compliance officers.

During the budget presentation of the department before the House Committee on Appropriations, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III lamented their insufficiency of labor law compliance officers who inspect business establishments to see whether their employers have been regularized.

"We are supposed to inspect 900,000 or more business establishments nationwide, but we only have 710 labor law compliance officers. Inspectors for short. We requested a plantilla position for 5,000 labor law compliance officers, they gave us only additional 100," Bello said.

"That is to say we have to admit our limitation in terms of inspection. Much as we would want to inspect all those businessmen all throughout the country to see to it that they comply with all labor laws and standards, physically it is becoming impossible," he added.

According to Bello, the DOLE was able to have 504,000 contractual workers regularized from 2016 up to the present year, of which 65% were regularized to the voluntary compliance of their employers and 35% were through compliance orders.

"[But] compared to the number of unregularized employees, malaki talaga ang pagkukulang. We have a long way to go," he said.

Labor Undersecretary Benjo Benavides explained that the only way to determine whether an employee's status is illegal or not is through inspection and a finality of a decision from the DOLE's regional director and the Office of the Secretary up to the Court of Appeals (CA) and the Supreme Court (SC).

He said cases of around 200,000 workers are still pending for resolution.

"We still have pending cases before the CA and SC. We cannot yet determine whether the status of their employment is illegal or not, because the very issue is still pending," Benavides said.

Bello is hoping that the appropriations panel could help them in getting more labor law compliance officers.

"Hopefully this time, with the support of this honorable committee, we would hope to get the requested additional labor law compliance officers," he said.

The DOLE is proposed a P14.42 billion budget for 2020 under the National Expenditure Program, which is 12% lower than their P16.36 appropriations for this year. —KBK, GMA News