World Teachers’ Day: Pay hike plea shunned

TEACHERS’ DAY As the Philippines celebrated World Teachers’ Day, teachers hold a press conference to demand a salary increase and better working conditions at the Quezon City Memorial Circle. —JAM STA. ROSA

It was not exactly the right time to do it. Nonetheless, teachers got the bad news just hours before the country joined the celebration of World Teachers’ Day—no salary increase.

It had to take Education Secretary Leonor Briones to break the bad news to teachers through a press conference in Ormoc City on Thursday night, hours before World Teachers’ Day was celebrated in the Philippines.

The government, Briones said, simply could not afford to raise teachers’ salaries.

She said raising teachers’ salaries may force the government to raise taxes anew to raise funds.

“Right now, the budget of the Department of Education is P527 billion and more than P350 billion go to the salaries of the teachers,” she said.

More taxes

An additional P350 billion in taxes would be needed if teachers’ wages were raised again, she added.

“Now, I would like to ask and consult all of you here as I presumed that all of you are taxpayers,” Briones said at the press conference.

“Are you prepared, can we afford to contribute P350 billion more in taxes to increase the salaries of teachers?,” said Briones, former national treasurer.

“While we think about the personal needs of our teachers, we have to also to think about the rest of the economy,” she said.

“We also have to think about the rest of the Filipinos and we have to prosper together,” she added.

P30,000 a month

Public school teachers, specially those belonging to the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), are demanding an increase in starting pay from the current P21,000 to P30,000, citing increasing prices of goods.

Briones said increasing salaries of public school teachers could prompt an exodus of teachers from private schools, which gave teachers salaries of as low as P6,000 a month.

In many Central Luzon provinces, teachers celebrated World Teachers’ Day wearing black shirts and collecting signatures for a petition for pay increase.

Led by ACT, teachers also demanded the scrapping of results-based performance management system (RPMS) and the Philippine professionals standard for teachers (PPST).

“The RPMS and PPST saddle us with a lot of paper work and preparation that we are so tired and stressed,” said Lorna Lacsina, head of the 3,000-member Angeles City Public School Teachers Assocation.

Teachers at the Marcelo H. del Pilar National High School in the City of Malolos in Bulacan province put up posters demanding a minimum monthly salary of P30,000.

“A salary below P30,000, like mine, won’t be able to cope with the high inflation,” said Pete de la Cruz, 64, who has been teaching for 42 years and retiring in November.

Lack of benefits

He complained about the lack of medical benefits, saying his late wife, also a teacher, spent all her retirement money to treat a serious ailment.

“We will be showered with praises [because it is World Teachers’ Day] but our stomachs are grumbling and we are trapped in a lot of debts,” he said. —REPORTS FROM JOEY GABIETA AND TONETTE OREJAS