The country’s biggest teacher’s union denounced the minimal increase in the fourth tranche of salary adjustment for public school teachers and vowed to continue its demand for substantial pay hike.
Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Davao region president Elenito Escalante said that the fourth tranche only amounts to an increase of P575 for Teacher I, P789 for Teacher II, and P1,008 for Teacher III.
Escalante said that the “lamentable” increase for the teachers is still not enough given the high cost of basic goods and commodities as an offshoot of the full implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law.
“We have been demanding this for a long time. And yet the government once again failed of their promise,” he said.
ACT is demanding for a minimum salary of P16,000 for Salary Grade I teachers, P30,000 for Teacher I and P31,000 for Instructor I.
Escalante also said that the group felt injustice, after learning that President Rodrigo Duterte will receive an additional P101,656 in his salary, while Department of Budget and Management (DBM) secretary Benjamin Diokno may receive as much as P70,000 more.
However, the President’s basic monthly salary going up from P165,752 to P222,278, is not the former’s own making. The adjustment is provided under Executive Order (EO) No. 201, which his predecessor President Benigno Aquino III signed on Feb. 19, 2016 and which mandated a four-year basic pay upgrading in the bureaucracy.
ACT Davao region vice president Wilfredo Lacatan said that improving the economic state of teachers is not the priority of the government.
“Why is it hard for the government to answer our demands? Just because we are teachers, they will just ignore our plights? We also have families to feed,” Lacatan said.
He said that if the president had favored the increase of the salaries of the soldiers and police, he should have a heart to also increase the salaries of the teachers, considering his mom, Soledad “Nanay Soling” Duterte was once a teacher.
“If the government were to truly be earnest in its efforts and wield its power and authority to serve the people, then nothing is impossible,” Escalante said.
