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.

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.
Villanueva: Regularize contractual govt workers, This news data comes from:http://www.aichuwei.com
”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.
- MMDA readies for FIVB men’s volleyball
- Protesters storm Discaya compound for second straight day
- Preliminary report on Lisbon funicular accident expected
- Public Works chief to press criminal charges against Bulacan engineer
- Marcos to attend UN meet in New York in Sept- Palace
- DPWH exec fired, 2 others face dismissal over flood control mess
- DBP launches P50M program for education
- Asian voices needed to 'shape agenda' - AVPN chief
- Lacson: Torre 'acted beyond his authority'
- Japan govt seeks to triple spending on drones