Involve teachers in government plans to hike salaries, ACT says
MANILA, Philippines — The Alliance of Concerned Teachers said Tuesday that the government should involve teachers in proposals to hike their salaries.
In a statement, ACT said “teachers are keen on taking part in the discussions as they want to ensure that the pay hike will be of substantial amount will be done in the soonest time possible.”
This comes after presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo assured the public that President Rodrigo Duterte will not renege on his promise to increase their teachers' salaries.
Duterte, in January, said he would dialogue with representatives of teachers' group on the salary hike.
The Department of Education, for its part, said Monday that it will “review and propose additional benefits for public school teachers.”
ACT chairperson Joselyn Martinez said that the push for higher pay for educators should not be left to the Budget and Education departments.
“Both agencies had for many times argued against our just demand, citing that we are better paid than our private counterparts and that there is no budget [for] raising our salaries,” she said.
'Salaries should allow teachers a decent life'
She raised the concern that the Budget department would base the increase in public teachers’ salaries on their counterparts in private schools, as was done for previous salary adjustments.
“Basic education is dominated by the state sector with 90% of the teacher population being public school teachers. The government should be the one setting the standards on teachers’ pay based on the value of our contribution to society and as provided by the Magna Carta of Public School Teachers which states that teachers’ salaries should be able to afford them decent standards of living,” Martinez said.
She also pointed out that the Duterte government has doubled salaries of police and military personnel but public teachers’ salaries remain low.
“The government has spent P64 billion in 2018 and another P70 billion in 2019 for the pay hike of uniformed personnel, why are they disheartened now to raise P150 billion to improve the lives of teachers? The BIR has billions in pesos of tax collection backlog, large amounts of budget are misallocated to ends that do not really benefit the people, billions more go to corruption,” she added.
Panelo, for his part, reiterated the Palace’s appeal to teachers for more patience as the government continues to look for funding for their salary hike.
"We appeal to our teachers that since this is a huge amount, extend your patience a little longer while we look for funding," he said. — Kristine Joy Patag
- Latest
- Trending
