THE Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is seeking an increase in its 2025 budget to hire more social workers to effectively deliver aid programs.
During the hearing of the agency’s budget for 2025 on Wednesday, Social Welfare Secretary Rexlon Gatchalian described to Deputy Majority Leader Lianda Bolilia the ways to digitize the identification of beneficiaries.
DSWD’s aid programs include the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS) and the Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita (AKAP).
Social Welfare and Development Secretary Rexlon “Rex” Gatchalian. Photo from DSWD FB page
“We are in the process of [migrating to] a fully automated AICS system that can be streamlined, but we always say that automation is [only] 50 percent of the solution; the other 50 percent is streamlining the business process,” Gatchalian said.
He added that while the department has over 37,000 employees, only a few are allowed to become disbursing officers — creating a “bottleneck” in the payout process.
“We want to do multiple payouts, or even in one site, we want to deploy multiple special disbursing officers, but we only have a few bonded employees,” Gatchalian said.
He urged representatives of both the Senate and Houses of Representatives to give the DSWD more special disbursing officers for the payouts.
Meanwhile, ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro asked Gatchalian about the status of the regularization of the DSWD’s job order and contract of service employees, as she believes that all of them should be regularized or at least made contractual.
Gatchalian said that 43 percent of its workforce is under contract of service — an “unfortunate number.” But he said he was working with the Department of Budget and Management to ensure the job security of those under contract of service.
“4,000 of our contract of service have been converted into contractual, and we are not stopping for them to become permanent employees,” he said.
In a subsequent interview, Gatchalian said that it was now time that the government give ample recognition to social workers and community development workers in the DSWD.
“Many of them have been working for two decades but are still under contract, so we owe it to them. We don’t want them to find a career path that has better job security, so we do not just need them, but we are also protecting our social and community development workers,” he said.
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