The Alliance of Concerned Teachers on Sunday downplayed the announcement of the Department of Education on the release of the P3,000 anniversary bonus for public school teachers and DepEd staff.
ACT national chairperson Joselyn Martinez said the benefit is not regular and the amount is too measly.
“It will have little impact to teachers who have been gruelling with unabated price increases since the start of the year. What we need is substantial salary increase now,” Martinez said.
“DepEd sure took their own sweet time in releasing the said bonus, while teachers have been calling for immediate relief as the value of their salaries dip by the month,” she added.
Martinez said public school teachers had to repeatedly ask Deped to release the anniversary bonus.
“Now, they talk as if this is urgently being dealt with,” she said.
Martinez said the severe effects of inflation have forced many public school teachers to “pawn” as early as August the regular bonuses which they are scheduled to receive this month, such as the 13th-month pay and P5,000 cash gift.
For her part, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said it took a while for the funds to be released because of the sheer volume of DepEd personnel, which is about 800,000 in total, including part-time employees.
“And while this will cost us only P3,000 per personnel, because of the huge army we have in DepEd, that will be a total of P2.8 billion,” she said.
Briones said this was the reason for the delay in the release of the bonus, noting that cascading the order to all personnel took time.
