The Department of Labor and Employment suspended the inspections on establishments in an effort to avoid “temptations” that may turn the gift-giving season into a venue for corruption.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III directed all the DOLE regional offices to suspend all labor inspection activities in their areas of jurisdiction from Dec. 15 to Jan. 15, 2019.
“It is our duty to ensure the continued effectiveness of DOLE’s enforcement of labor laws and standards and uphold the integrity of our labor inspection activities, specially this season with heightened chances of bribery and suspicions,” Bello said.
The period of suspension will be utilized for the disposition of all pending Labor Standards cases and preparation of the department’s labor laws compliance monitoring program next year.
However, complaint inspections, technical safety inspections, and Occupational Safety and Health Standards investigations are not covered by the suspension, as well as the urgent inspections of establishments directed by the labor secretary.
Also, Bello assured of consolidated results of the labor inspections by the end of the year as all the regional directors are expected to upload the results of their inspections activities in the Management Information System to further track and improve the labor laws compliance monitoring program for 2019.
As of September 2018, DOLE’s campaign against illegal forms of contractualization has so far netted 342,467 regularized workers of which 254,452 workers were voluntarily regularized by their employers while 88,015 workers were regularized through inspection.
DOLE has also inspected 134,263 establishments nationwide covering 8.306 million.