Be it enacted by the National Assembly of the Philippines:

SECTION 1. Section one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine of the Administrative Code is amended so as to read as follows:

"SEC. 1659. The Bureau of Justice shall have one Chief to be known as the Solicitor-General whose salary shall be eleven thousand pesos per annum and shall have the rank of an Undersecretary of a Department. He shall be assisted by one First Assistant Solicitor-General whose salary shall be nine thousand pesos per annum. When the Solicitor-General is unable to perform his duties or in case of a vacancy in the office, the First Assistant Solicitor-General shall temporarily perform the functions of said office, or, in his absence, the Secretary of Justice may designate the acting chief of the office. There shall also be three Assistant Solicitor-General and such number of solicitors as may from time to time be available under current appropriations and as the conditions of the service shall require.

"The qualifications for appointment to the positions of Solicitor-General, the First Assistant Solicitor-General, and Assistant Solicitor-General shall be the same as those prescribed for judges of Courts of First Instance, and those for the solicitors shall be the same as those prescribed for provincials fiscals."

SEC. 2. To pay the salary of the First Assistant Solicitor-General there is appropriated from the funds of the Philippine Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of nine thousand pesos.

SEC. 3. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

Approved, May 26, 1940.