MANILA, Philippines?(UPDATE) Non-career Executive Service Officials (non-CESO) in government can still keep their jobs for the next three months.

President Aquino on Friday signed Memorandum Circular No. 2 allowing non-CESO occupying Career Executive Service (CES) positions in all agencies of the executive branch to ?remain in office and continue to perform their duties and discharge their responsibilities until Oct. 31, 2010.?

The order is also good ?until their resignations have been accepted and/or until their respective replacements have been appointed or designated, whichever comes first, unless they are reappointed in the meantime.?

?In cases where the head of agency or office has resigned and whose resignation has been accepted or is deemed separated on June 30, 2010 and no replacement has been appointed or designated,? according to the circular, ?the next-in-rank and most senior official of the agency or a senior official of the department to which said agency is attached, shall be designated?as officer in charge.?

The order states that such officer in charge will work until Oct. 31 this year ?or until a replacement has been appointed or designated, whichever comes first, unless his designation is extended in the meantime.?

Officials whose service ends today or whose resignation has been accepted effective on the same period but with still no replacement ?shall be deemed separated from the service as of the date of termination or acceptance of resignation.?

The new circular brought light to the uncertainty faced by non-CESO officials occupying CES positions whose terms of service was due to end July 31., as per a previous order by Mr Aquino.

Presidential legal counsel Ed De Mesa on Friday said it was difficult to determine how many such employees were covered by the new order.

But Elena Bautista-Horn, former chief of the Presidential Management Staff, citing figures from the Career Executive Service Board, said the there were a total of 1,179 non-CESO employees as of July 13 this year.