A study on the compliance of the City of Manila to various civil service laws.

Abstract

Decentralization devolved some powers from the national government to local governments. This increased the autonomy for local government, thus, giving them the right to create and decide on their own like in fiscal and personnel management of the agency. However, there is also a central agency that governs on personnel management in the government agencies—the Civil Service Commission.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the Compliance of Local Government of Manila to various Civil Service laws concerning the appointments, promotions and dismissal. Another aim was to assess the effects of decentralization and politics in the efficiency and integrity of the local government. Finally, cases of political accommodations and job mismatches in the bureaucracy were examined in the study.

The researcher used an Explorative-Case-oriented Qualitative type of research wherein she used in-depth interviews with various stakeholders in the study to gather information. Aside from that, quantitative research methodology was also utilized. A survey was conducted to a range of employees in different departments of Manila City Hall and a total of 121 respondents participated.

The results of the interviews and survey showed that the merit system is not completely working in the selection of appointments in the local governments and politics has a huge factor regarding this trend. Therefore, the author recommended changing the whole highly-politicized system on the local government, which instead promotes transparency and accountability among officials and employees that would help in achieving an efficient and with integrity local government.