Short answer. Yes, that check is a stated duty. Before an overseas employment contract is authenticated, the labour attache or consular official is required to verify and certify that its terms conform to the Labor Code and the implementing rules. Authentication is meant to follow that verification, not replace it.
What the law says
To verify and certify as requisite to authentication that the terms and conditions of employment in contracts involving Filipino workers are in accordance with the Labor Code
Labor Code, Article 21 — Duties Of Foreign Service Officers. Read the full provision →
Verification comes before the stamp
The duty is to verify and certify as requisite to authentication that the terms and conditions of employment in contracts involving Filipino workers are in accordance with the Labor Code and its implementing rules. The phrase as requisite to authentication is the operative one. Authentication is not a notarial flourish applied to whatever paper is handed over; the Code treats it as the end of a process whose first step is reading the contract against Philippine labour standards. A contract that could not survive that reading is one the official is not supposed to certify.
What a verified contract is and is not evidence of
It is easy to over-read the stamp. Verification speaks to the terms written on the page — the wage stated, the hours stated, the benefits stated — measured against the standards the Code sets. It says nothing about whether the employer will honour those terms, whether the workplace is what it was described to be, or whether a second contract will be produced on arrival. Workers are frequently asked to sign a different document once they land. That later paper has not been verified by anyone, and the fact that a verified contract exists is exactly why the substitution matters.
The offices named are the ones that existed in 1974
The article names the boards that regulated overseas and maritime deployment when the Labor Code was written. Overseas employment regulation has been reorganised more than once since, and the bodies that perform these functions today are not the ones on the page. The duty itself is unaffected: what the provision fixes is that somebody on the Philippine side must check the contract against Philippine standards before it is authenticated. If you are trying to find out who did that check on your papers, work from the certification on the document rather than from the names in the statute.
Keep the version that was verified
The practical consequence is a filing habit. Keep the authenticated contract itself — the copy bearing the certification, not a photocopy of an unsigned draft — somewhere outside your employer's reach, and keep whatever you are asked to sign afterwards, even if you signed it under pressure. If a dispute later arises with the agency that deployed you, the comparison between the verified terms and what actually happened is the heart of it. Bring both documents and your payslips to a lawyer; that pairing usually decides the case before anything else is examined.