EDITORIAL - Trimming the fat

To improve the delivery of services, President Duterte is asking Congress to create new departments for overseas Filipino workers, disaster resilience, and water resource protection and management.

At the same time, the President has endorsed to Congress the government right-sizing bill, in line with his push for efficiency and fiscal prudence in government.

While his congressional allies work on the new departments, the right-sizing bill can serve as a guide for avoiding redundancies in creating new offices in the bureaucracy. Finance officials have said about 60 percent of the national budget is eaten up by maintenance and operating expenses, of which the largest chunk goes to salaries.

For efficiency, the Duterte administration should be finding ways of eliminating redundant positions and functions, allowing government offices to be merged or abolished. Instead the bureaucratic fat keeps growing, aggravated by an increasing trend toward congressional gerrymandering and the ever-growing number of party-list representatives, many of them with vague constituencies.

Every new congressional district created and every person added to the party-list roster in the House of Representatives must have an office with staff and all the perks that go with the position, all at taxpayers’ expense. In the 17th Congress alone, about 10 new districts were created, sponsored mostly by dynasties whose members have run out of choice government positions to occupy.

There are other gerrymandering bills that the 18th Congress is expected to tackle. President Duterte must put his foot down and stop this practice that is becoming a drain on limited public finances. There are many urgent matters that need funding, particularly education and public health care.

In his fourth State of the Nation Address, the President gave special emphasis on the campaign against corruption. The judicious use of public funds is an indispensable component of this campaign.