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Friday, March 29, 2024

Salary hike for teachers pushed

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TWO militant lawmakers have appealed to the Duterte administration to  grant substantial salary increase for all government employees at the soonest possible time, and not in 2020.

ACT Teachers Party-list Reps. France Castro and Antonio Tinio made the call even as they pushed for the passage of House Bill 7211 which proposes to raise the entry-level salary of public school teachers to P30,000 a month and the salary of regular entry-level government employees to P16,000. It also aims to increase the Personnel Economic Relief Allowance granted to all government employees from P2,000 to P5,000 per month.

Tinio stressed the urgency to increase the salaries of government employees, including public school teachers and workers in the education sector, to correct the errors made by the Salary Standardization Law  adjustment through Executive Order 201 (2016); and the doubling of salaries of military and uniformed personnel through Joint Resolution 1 (2018).

“EO 201 merely grants measly increases that are quickly eaten away by taxes and inflation. The salaries remain insufficient for a family living wage of P1,119 per day or P33,570 per month for a family of six to have a decent and humane condition of living,” said Tinio.

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Castro said EO 201 was “unjust” as it only gives more to those who already have more, and far less to those who have less.

Castro said the salary of the lowest-ranked government employee was increased by only 22.98 percent or P9,000 to P11,000, and that of a Teacher I and Nurse I by only 11.89 petcent or P18,549 to P20,754. On the other hand, the salaries of those occupying executive-level positions were increased by 76.96 percent up to 233.12 percent or Salary Grade 25 to Salary Grade 33.

The two lawmakers also said that since the enactment of Joint Resolution 1, the civilian personnel’s salaries are also left far behind the MUP’s basic pay.

They said that candidate soldiers earn P18,587 monthly while thousands of civilian rank-and-file employees in Salary Grades (SG) 1 to 10 are paid P10,510 to P18,718, though they have similar, even higher qualifications, or have spent equal or even more years in government service. A Police Officer 1 (PO1) and a Private are now paid P29,668, almost P10,000 more than the P20,179 paid to a Teacher I, a Nurse I, a Private Secretary, a Registrar I, and a Guidance Counselor I (SG 11) under the third tranche of the revised Salary Standardization Law.

“We urge the Duterte administration to grant substantial salary increases for all government employees now and not in 2020, by asking Congress to prioritize the passage of House Bill 7211,” Tinio and Castro said.

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