SENATE Majority Leader Joel Villanueva renewed his call for the government to provide security of tenure by absorbing qualified workers hired under temporary arrangements.

​The senator was referring to job order (JO) and contract of service (COS) employees, considering that there are available plantilla positions in their respective organizations.

Villanueva: Regularize contractual govt workers, This news data comes from:http://ds.erlvyiwan.com

​He made the appeal during the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) presentation of the 2026 National Expenditure Program before the Senate Committee on Finance on Monday.

​Villanueva expressed alarm at the steady rise of “endo” (end of contract) workers in government, reaching 939,771 JOs and COS workers in 2024. This figure was on top of the estimated 2 million permanent positions in government.

​”Despite raising this concern every year for the past nine years, this practice is still ongoing,” Villanueva said.

​Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman assured Villanueva that the DBCC is prioritizing providing plantilla positions to qualified JOs and COS employees in the implementation of the recently signed law on optimizing the bureaucracy.