Gov’t has 93,000 Job Openings

MANILA, Philippines - Looking for a job? Why not apply for one in the government, the country’s biggest employer.

The bureaucracy has job openings totaling more than 93,000 this year and next year, according to budget documents submitted to the House appropriations committee by Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.

It will recruit nurses, teachers, policemen, auditors, lawyers, judges, firemen, soldiers and doctors, among other personnel.

Based on the documents, there are at present 67,132 vacant positions

in various agencies waiting to be filled by agency heads. There are funds for these jobs in this year's budget and in the proposed P1.8-trillion 2012 spending program.

Additionally, there are funds in next year's budget for the hiring of 13,000 new teachers, 12,000 new nurses, 200 doctors, and 1,021 midwives.

The basic pay in government is not bad and is already comparable to the salary in the private sector. The hiring rate for a public school teacher, for instance, is about P15,000, excluding allowances.

The Department of Education has the biggest number of vacant positions with 31,294. This is on top of the 13,000 new teachers it is authorized to hire next year.


To fill a total of 44,294 existing and new teaching and non-teaching jobs, the department is allowed to use P11.8 billion out of its P238.8-billion 2012 budget.

The other agencies with vacancies are Congress with 655 unfilled positions; the Supreme Court and lower courts, 5,539; Civil Service Commission, 269; Commission on Audit, 6,483; Commission on Elections, 547; Office of the Ombudsman, 1,062; Bureau of Fire Protection, 921; Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, 58; Philippine National Police, 5,234; Armed Forces of the Philippines, 4,605; state colleges and universities, 5,569; Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, 738; Philippine Military Academy, 74; Philippine Science High School, 94; Commission on Higher Education, 113; AFP Medical Center, 97; Veterans Memorial Medical Center, 149; National Defense College of the Philippines, 14; and Philippine Public Safety College, 25.

The Department of Health currently has 3,589 jobs waiting to be filled. This number is on top of the 13,221 new nurses, doctors and midwives the department is allowed to hire in the 2012 budget.

It is not clear why more than 67,000 government jobs have remained unfilled.

But according to Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, many agencies deliberately refuse to fill vacancies so they could generate savings that they divert to more allowances, bonuses and year-end incentives.

Abad said the more than 67,000 unfilled positions have been vacant for many years, prompting his department to remove the corresponding funds from agencies and put them in a separate budget item called "miscellaneous personnel benefits fund."

In all, a total of P23.4 billion would be available in the 2012 budget to fill these positions.

"All the agencies concerned have to do is to hire people and we will release the money. It's all about transparency and accountability, and ensuring that funds are spent for purposes for which they are intended," Abad said.

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