Lawmakers agree that DOLE needs higher budget to hire labor inspectors

Lawmakers from the House Committee on Appropriations and officials of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) have agreed that the department needs a higher budget so it can hire more labor law compliance officers (LLCO).

“We will appreciate Your Honor if we could get that support from Congress, the additional budgetary allocation for our labor law compliance officers,” Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said during the department’s budget hearing on Thursday.

According to Bello, labor laws would be put to waste if DOLE fails to implement it properly due to lack of law enforcers.

“Honestly, our labor laws are well-crafted, especially so with the House Bill 6908 that is very good,” he said.

“But we would be short on implementation, with only barely 800 inspectors to inspect more than 900,000 business establishments. The well-crafted laws might lose its sense,” he claimed.

Bello was explaining to Bayan Muna Representative Carlos Zarate why DOLE’s budget was in a downward trend since 2016, and even if the proposed 2019 allocation is higher than the previous year.

“If you compare the budget of DOLE from 2019 to 2019, it went up […] But actually if you look at the 2016 level, 2016 GAA (General Appropriations Act), the budget of DOLE is P18 billion […] it went down in 2019,” Zarate said.

The secretary explained that the reduced budget in 2017 was because the Department of Budget and Management cut down allocations for LLCOs.

“Probably out of budgetary constraints, they were not able to grant our request for us to hire 2,000 labor law compliance officers. Hopefully this time, with the help of the Congress, we would have additional LLCOs,” Bello said.

Zarate and Gabriela Representative Emmi de Jesus asked how DOLE could possibly do inspections with a small staff.

“We know that the labor sector has a lot of problems today— contractualization, endo (end of contract), how could you monitor everything?” Zarate asked.

“With just around 800 labor inspectors covering more than 900,000 establishments, it would be impossible for DOLE to conduct the safety inspections across the country as mandated by the OSH (Occupational Safety and Health) Law,” he noted.

De Jesus seconded DOLE’s request for a higher budget in the future.

“There is a need for an additional budget to strengthen DOLE’s regulation of companies, especially concerning the safety of workers,” she explained. /ee