A first-term lawmaker on Wednesday sought an increase in the entry level salary of public school teachers to P30,000 a month.
Rep. Precious Hipolito-Castelo of Quezon City, in House Bill 1020, lamented the country’s public school teachers were underpaid considering the extent of the effort they do in molding the country’s future leader.
In filing her bill, Hipolito-Castelo acknowledged the constitutional provision that “highest budgetary priority to education and the guarantee that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment.”
“With the ever-growing challenges that face our public schoolteachers, it is only fitting to accord them the salary increase they rightfully deserve,” Hipolito-Castelo said.
Hipolito-Castelo said the current salary grade of these teachers was way below their worth and their contribution to national development.
“The teaching profession entails sacrifice, self-denial, patience and hard work, as they deal with individuals of different behaviors and because they carry on their work even up to their own homes,” she said.
The bill provides the needed budget for the increase shall be incorporated in the appropriation for the Department of Education for each fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the Department of Budget and Management, in coordination with the DepEd, shall promulgate the implementing rules and regulations of the measure.