Government workers to get P1,100 pay hike next year

MANILA, Philippines — Government employees will get a salary increase of at least P1,100 next year, acting Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado assured congressmen during a budget hearing last night.

Avisado gave the assurance in response to questions raised by Bayan Muna Rep. Ferdinand Gaite, who heads a confederation of state workers.

Gaite asked how much rank-and-file personnel would be receiving, citing the case of the lowest-paid employee holding Salary Grade 1 who gets about P11,000 in basic monthly salary.

“It will be 10 percent of his salary,” Avisado responded.

“That means this employee will get P1,100 pay increase,” Gaite said, to which the acting budget secretary agreed.

Earlier, Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, who chairs the House of Representatives committee on appropriations, revealed that the proposed P4.1-trillion national budget for 2020 President Duterte has submitted to Congress includes P31 billion for compensation adjustment.

Gaite said the amount would not be enough for a P1,100 across-the-board increase for more than one million government officials and employees.

“For next year, the President proposed a far bigger P70 billion for the salary increase of soldiers and policemen, who are far fewer than civilian government personnel,” he said.

Asked to comment on Gaite’s statement yesterday, Ungab said he agreed that P31 billion “may not be enough.”

“Let us see how we will structure the salary increase, who will be covered or where we could source augmentations,” Gaite told The STAR.

Based on a 10-percent increase, the basic pay of the lowest paid public school teachers and government nurses who hold Salary Grade 11, which pays P20,754 a month, would go up by P2,075.

The increase in one month is almost the total amount of adjustment teachers and nurses have received over the last four years, whose basic salary went up from P19,077 in 2016 to P20,754 this year.

If next year’s pay hike materializes, it would be the fifth consecutive year that government officials and employees will have received annual salary increase. 

They are still receiving their last annual adjustment this year under the four-year salary increase program in the bureaucracy contained in Executive Order 201, which former president Benigno Aquino III issued in February 2016, four months before he stepped down from the presidency. 

Aquino issued the order after Congress failed to approve the then proposed Salary Standardization Law 4 due to disagreement on whether the pay hike would cover military and police retirees.