THE House committee on civil service and professional regulation approved Wednesday a substitute bill seeking to grant regular status and civil service eligibility to contractual, job-order, and casual government employees.

“Technical working group head, Rep. Raymund Democrito C. Mendoza (TUCP Party List) presented the substitute bill. The committee approved the bill subject to styling and amendments put forth during today’s committee meeting,” Iligan City Rep. Frederick W. Siao, who also chairs the committee, said in a statement on Wednesday.

According to Mr. Siao, the approved substitute bill, which consolidates 14 House Bills, underwent “extensive consultations” with stakeholders and offers an “effective solution” to the concerns of the thousands of contractual workers in the government.

“The final form of the bill will be made public very soon. The bill underwent extensive consultations with stakeholders. We believe this bill would be an effective solution at this time to the concerns of about 670 thousand ‘endo’ workers in government, most of whom (470 thousand) are in the payrolls of local governments,” he said.

One of the 14 bills, House Bill 52, which was written by Rep. Manuel D.G. Cabochan III of Magdalo Party List, states that “all incumbent and contractual government employees who have rendered at least five years of continuous service in the case of national government agencies or a total of 10 years of continuous service in the case of local government units” will be entitled to security of tenure.

“The fact that the government has created casual and contractual positions and keeps appointing people to the said positions year after year proves that the positions are clearly necessary or desirable to the orderly and efficient operation of the concerned agencies,” Mr. Cabochan said in his explanatory note. — Genshen L. Espedido

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