Teachers group scores salary ‘study’

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) on Saturday slammed the Department of Education’s (DepEd) “fixation” with commissioning studies, saying it need not look far and wide to find answers to this perennial issue.

ACT chair Vladimer Quetua questioned the need for DepEd to tap multilateral lender World Bank (WB) to come up with recommendations on whether a pay increase is appropriate for teachers.

“Teachers have been getting a paltry pay for years, and ‘studying it’ has been the government’s answer to this. What else do they need to prove when most are only left with such a little take-home pay?” he said in a statement.

“There’s no reason to delay the provision of a decent and living wage any further,” Quetua stressed, citing the latest estimates by progressive think tank Ibon Foundation that a living wage for a family of five constitutes a monthly salary of around P36,000.

He made the remark after DepEd last week refused to categorically say its position on the clamor for a substantial increase while it awaits the results of the WB study expected to come out in a few weeks.

READ: House bill proposes P50,000 as teachers’ monthly pay

In her second Basic Education Report last month, Vice President and concurrent Education Secretary Sara Duterte vowed to look into possible strategies to bump up the take-home pay of teachers, including the institutionalization of the “overload” and overtime pay for teachers. —KATHLEEN DE VILLA