Commission on Elections chairman George Garcia said the poll body will still ask Congress to allocate a supplemental budget to cover the increase in the honoraria for teachers who will serve during the 2023 barangay, and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE).
“Comelec will really push for the additional honoraria. We will ask from Congress a supplemental budget for the barangay and SK elections,” Garcia said in a radio interview.
“That is our call and I hope we will be heard for the sake of our teachers. The work is more difficult during BSKE because it is not automated. Our teachers manually count the ballots,” he added.
Based on the computation of Comelec, Electoral Board chairpersons will receive P6,000, while poll board members get P5,000 and precinct workers get P4,000.
Last year, the Comelec was given P8.4 billion for the postponed December 2022 polls.
Since it was rescheduled to 2023, the Comelec asked Congress for an additional budget of P10 billion, on top of the P8.4 billion, for the BSKE.
However, Comelec spokesperson Rex Laudiangco said Congress only allocated P2.7 billion under this year’s national budget.
Meanwhile, the number of new voters has increased to 1.1 million some nine days before the voter registration for the 2023 BSKE ends, Garcia said.
Since the voter registration for the BSKE started on December 12, 2022, some 1,100,000 new voters have already registered.
Of this number, around 7,000 voter registration applications were processed under Comelec’s Register Anywhere Project (RAP).
