Guevarra welcomes appointment of 60 new fiscals

“We thank the Office of the President for facilitating these appointments. The appointments of 60 or so new prosecutors are still for release,” Guevarra said. (PNA photo)

MANILA — Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra thanked President Rodrigo Duterte for the appointment of 60 new prosecutors.

“We thank the Office of the President for facilitating these appointments. The appointments of 60 or so new prosecutors are still for release,” Guevarra said in a text message sent to the Philippine News Agency (PNA).

Guevarra, however, acknowledged that the Department of Justice (DOJ) still needs more than a hundred prosecutors to curb the shortage in manpower hounding the agency.

“We need hundreds more to man our field offices all over the country,” the justice chief said.

The new prosecutors were appointed to various cities and municipalities nationwide.

Earlier, Guevarra said addressing the shortage of prosecutors would solve the need to expedite the resolution of criminal complaints currently undergoing preliminary investigation before the National Prosecution Service (NPS).

Despite the shortage in personnel, Guevarra said the DOJ still needs “an improvement in the quality of the prosecutors whom we choose.

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“Therefore, that means to say also improvement on the matter of selection and recruitment of prosecutors so that we get only the better ones,” he said.

Guevarra also said he believes that there is a need to provide assistance and resources to state prosecutors.

Though allowed by the law, he said there are places where prosecutors get support and allowances from local government units, which is also an area of concern.

“Somehow, meron konting element ng baka ma-compromise ‘yung independence of our prosecutors (There is an element that the independence of prosecutors could be compromised),” Guevarra said.

“So we would like to provide as much resources as possible to our prosecution service so that the need for the reliance partly on the local government units can be entirely eliminated and so that our prosecutors can work and do their jobs very independently,” he said.

Acting Prosecutor General Richard Anthony Fadullon said there are 1,057 vacancies for prosecutors that need to be filled across the country.

He earlier said they will focus all efforts towards professionalizing the NPS and increasing the efficiency of prosecutors.