DOLE-8 on track on ending ‘endo’

TACLOBAN CITY, Sept. 25  – The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is on track on its drive to regularize more workers in Eastern Visayas this year, a regional official said Tuesday.

Of the 9,000 contractual employees targeted for regularization, at least 6,492 has been regularized as of mid-September, representing 72 percent of their target, according to DOLE Regional Director Yahya Centi.

“We are gaining momentum and we’re gaining significant achievement in so far as regularization is concerned,” Centi said in an interview.

Majority of regularized workers are employed by micro, small, and medium enterprises.

The labor department said it is also conducting an ongoing assessment to big business establishments operating in the region to encourage business owners to regularize their contractual employees.

About 62 percent of the 1,458 establishments had been inspected by the regional office.

“We are aiming to achieve our target by December because it is our mandate,” Centi said. Ending “endo” or end of contract is one of the election promises of President Rodrigo Duterte.

Contributing to the remarkable performance in the region is the regularization of more than a thousand of these workers, who were given permanent employment status by the Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp., the country’s largest copper smelter based in Isabel, Leyte.

Among those prioritized in the campaign include shopping malls, hotels, restaurants, food chains, gas stations, manufacturing, construction, transport, and the fishing industry, since these are the establishments vulnerable to labor-only contracting.

The regional office is largely counting on voluntary compliance since it only has 20 labor inspectors tasked to check the compliance of thousands of business establishments in the region’s six provinces.

During the May 1 Labor Day celebration this year, the President signed Executive Order 51 to end contractualization.

The directive prohibits contracting or subcontracting when undertaken to circumvent workers’ right to security of tenure, self-organization and collective bargaining, and peaceful concerted activities pursuant to the 1987 Constitution. (RTA/PNA)