The year 2018 started with welcome news that President Duterte had signed Joint Resolution No. 1, increasing the salary, allowances, benefits and incentives of our country’s uniformed personnel. Effective this month, the Police Officer 1 (PO1), the lowest ranking officer, will receive a 100-percent increase in salary, with a new monthly base pay of P29,668 from P14,834. The percentage of increase in salary declines as the position goes higher, as lower-ranking officers were made a priority due to budget constraints.
I am in full support of the salary hike for our uniformed men. In fact, in November 2017, I filed a House resolution to investigate the possible exclusion of all uniformed personnel under the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police in the Salary Standardization Law (SSL) because there is significant and comparable differences in the conditions and hazards in the work of uniformed military and police personnel.
The President also expressed his desire to double the salary of public school teachers. Last week, during the 21st Cabinet meeting, the President instructed Cabinet members to find ways to increase the salary of public school teachers. However, Department of Budget and Management Secretary Benjamin Diokno said that the salary hike for teachers would may compromise other equally urgent government programs such as the “Build, Build, Build.” It was also explained that there are 600,000 public school teachers earning at least P20,000 each exclusive of bonuses and allowances. Doubling their salaries would cost the government up to P1 trillion.
I support the salary hike for public school teachers. They play a vital role in raising our Filipino children to be good citizens of our country. Also, our OFW kababayans who are teachers working as domestic help abroad should be given given financial incentive to come home.
Whether we like it or not, we are mandated by law to assign the highest budgetary priority to education. Therefore, if we do not have enough money, then we should generate more government revenue to ensure that the education sector is as its best.
An easy way to generate more income is to improve the tax collection of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs, and expand our non-tax sources of government revenue. Come budget deliberations, we must appropriate the funds according to our government’s priorities and the urgent needs of the Filipinos.