#WTD2023 – It is high time to give Filipino teachers a pay hike
With less than three months to go before 2023 ends, the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. remains non-committal on raising the salaries of government employees in general, including public school teachers.
Last August, Secretary Amenah Pangandaman of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) mentioned that nearly P17 billion has been set aside for pay hike for government employees. She added that the increase may be anywhere from 2% to 6% of state workers’ current monthly pay. However, she added that a comprehensive review of the Compensation and Position Classification System for the government sector is still ongoing.
For her part, Congresswoman Stella Quimbo of Marikina said two weeks ago that the conduct of this study is experiencing delays and that the results may only be finalzied by December. Quimbo is the House Appropriations Committee Senior Vice Chair.
Vice President and concurrent Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio and her predecessor Leonor Briones have also been wishy-washy about the issue, with the former even saying that raising the salaries of public school teachers may trigger an exodus of educators from private schools because they will all be flocking to DepEd.
In reality, there is nothing else that needs to be studied on the issue of salary increase. Just today, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that the inflation rate for September 2023 is at 6.1% compared to last year. Inflation rate refers to the increase in the prices of commodities over a specific period of time.
In other words, the higher the inflation, the worse for Filipinos. Since Filipino workers are not seeing their salaries increase despite the across-the-board spike in the prices of goods and services, they are effectively getting a pay cut.
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