MANILA, Philippines - The Aquino administration hopes to complete its plan to implement a central payroll system within three to six years, starting with the payroll of National Government agencies, National Treasurer Roberto Tan said yesterday.
“That’s a road map we are trying to study. We will study how we will do it. It will be a three-to six-year program,” Tan said.
Tan said that under the plan, the government would put under a single account in the Treasury all the payroll of state workers.
The move is part of efforts to lessen bureaucratic corruption and to cut the red tape as is being practiced in other countries. “If other countries can do it, we can also do it,” Tan said.
To implement the program, Tan said the government would have to study its “staffing requirements” and how it would improve the operations of the Treasury’s offices nationwide.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad first announced the plan dubbed as the Central Payroll System where salaries of government employees will no longer go through the agencies.
Instead, the national treasury office will deposit the salaries to the bank accounts of the employees.
Tan said one of the beneficiaries of the plan are government workers as it hopes to address the perennial problem of non-remittance of contributions of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the state-owned pension fund for private employees.
“That’s one of the benefits,” Tan said.
At one point, the unpaid contributions of government agencies to GSIS reached P9 billion plus P15 billion in penalties.
Tan said the Treasury would start with the payroll of all national government agencies first before doing the handling the payroll of government-owned and controlled corporations and government financial institutions.