Lawmaker backs salary hike for 1.6 M state workers

MANILA, Philippines - Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano III yesterday supported the Aquino administration’s plan to grant a salary increase to the 1.6 million government workers under the proposed P3.002-trillion national budget for 2016.

“The increase is one of the commitments made by the President to the people – his ‘bosses’ – when he assumed office in 2010,” he said.

“Making good on his commitment to the country’s 1.6 million state workers as he ends his term next year would be one of many fitting accomplishments of the President that would concretely prove that he cares and is sensitive to the plight of his bosses,” he said.

He noted the statement of Budget Secretary Florencio Abad that the Department of Budget and Management “is close to completing the benefits and compensation survey that it started in 2013 to determine the necessity of raising government workers’ wages.”

According to the budget secretary, the planned pay increase would come from the lump sum labeled miscellaneous personnel benefits fund in the proposed 2016 national budget.

Abad could not say how much is the envisioned salary adjustment.

“We will be submitting our recommendation to the President in August. And we will be meeting with Congress for a joint Senate-House resolution in case the President approves another round of pay increases,” he said.

Albano said a “decent and reasonable amount of pay increase will inspire and encourage all government workers to work harder and with utmost dedication and shun corruption in keeping with the daang matuwid (straight path) program of the President.”

There are several bills pending in the House that seek a new round of pay hike for state workers, particularly teachers.

There is also a clamor to increase the basic monthly salary for government nurses to P25,000 from the current P18,000.

Rep. Leah Paquiz of party-list group Ang NARS said under the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002, the pay level of government nurses “should not be lower than Salary Grade 15 or about P25,000 a month.”

“I don’t know why the Department of Budget and Management is not complying with the law. The DBM claims the government cannot afford it, but that is the law. They have to find the funds for it. The amount involved is not big because government nurses are not that many,” she said.

She said her party-list group has filed a petition with the Supreme Court to compel the DBM to follow what the law provides.

Eighteen thousand pesos (Salary Grade 11) is the entry-level pay in public schools, where teachers used to receive only P3,000 as basic monthly salary. In the military and the police, the entry-level salary is about P16,000.