Borra: Hike in teachers' honoraria for elections service not possible

The requested increase in the honoraria of teachers-servers for the May 14 elections may not be possible anymore because the original amount for such has been allocated already, said Commission on Elections Commissioner Resurreccion Borra yesterday.

Borra, in a regional command conference in Cebu yesterday, said the Comelec could not just raise the amount of the honoraria considering that the amount has been fixed already in the 2007 General Appropriations Act.

The GAA authorizes the spending of a certain amount for a specified purpose. "If there is no authority from the General Appropriations Act, the Commission cannot spend. In the first place, Comelec does not have money," said the commissioner.

Officials of the Department of Education, and the Association of Concerned Teachers have asked the Comelec earlier to increase the honorarium of every teacher, who is a member of the Board of Election Inspectors, from P1000 to P2000 daily.

The Comelec had even set an allotment of P3000 for each member of the BEI for just a two-day work for the elections.

The GAA for 2007, although approved by the bicameral conference committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives, has yet to be submitted to President Gloria Arroyo for enactment.

Borra said the Comelec had requested DepEd and the teachers' group to undertake the lobbying in Congress instead because it is Congress that controls the budget and that the Comelec only spend what has been appropriated.

There are 216,000 polling precincts nationwide and the Comelec needs about 648,000 teachers to work in the BEIs. This means that the daily budget for their honorarium would hit P648 million for one day, and about P1.296 billion for two days.

Nearly 50 percent of the Comelec's P4-billion budget for the elections would be spent for the teachers' honoraria, said Borra.

Borra meanwhile requested for media's help in the elections. "We are endeavoring our best to be prepared, despite so many difficulties and constraint, that's why I am appealing to the media to help support our activities not to derail or to misled."

Comelec and media will adopt the ICE (informative, communicative, and educative) responsibility in serving the Filipino people, Borra said. - Gregg M. Rubio/RAE