Despite its need for additional labor inspectors for its campaign against illegal contractualization next year, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said the request remains unfunded for now.
Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III disclosed in an interview with reporters that hiring more labor law compliance officers (LLCO) is not included in the DOLE’s P13-billion budget under the 2019 National Expenditure Program.
Instead, he said, the recruitment of more LLCOs will be included in the agency’s P2-billion supplemental budget.
“We already made a proposal on this but we are not sure if it will be adopted by the Department of Budget and Management [DBM],” Bello said in an ambush interview during the “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” Caravan at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City on Sunday.
The DOLE earlier said it is targeting to hire an additional 2,000 LLCOs this year to augment its existing 500 labor inspectors. He said this is necessary since their inspectors are tasked to regularly assess over 900,000 companies nationwide.
Aside from hiring LLCOs, the labor chief said the P2 billion will also be used for the repatriation of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in case the need for it arises.
“We never know when there will be a need to repatriate OFWs. We cannot always rely on the generosity of the host country,” Bello said.
For this year, Bello noted the country was “very lucky” that the host government of thousands of distressed OFWs in Kuwait and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) decided to help in their repatriation.
“But what will happen if they do not [help with the repatriation anymore]?” he said.
The DOLE currently is among the government agencies with the lowest fund allocation for 2019 after the DBM only approved P13 billion of its P17-billion budget proposal.
Bello said the agency is ready to work with the DBM-approved budget, although he said he still hopes that the DBM will reconsider and approve their request for a higher budget for next year.