Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr.
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON
Quezon City Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr. on Wednesday filed a bill seeking to impose another tranche of salary standardization to increase the pay and compensation of government workers and uniformed military personnel.
House Bill 11, which Belmonte called the “Salary Standardization Law (SSL) of 2016,” seeks to implement the policy of the state to a just and equitable compensation for government employees and military personnel.
The proposed measure standardizes the compensation for all civilian government personnel and raises the pay of government employees to at least 70 percent of the private sector rate or a weighted average increase of 45 percent in all salary grades.
The bill, which would be implemented over a four-year period from Jan. 1, 2016 to Jan. 1, 2019, includes a combination of salary increase, 14th month pay and enhanced performance-based bonus.
The bill would include government personnel in the executive, legislative and judicial branches and other constitutional offices. Government-owned corporations and local government units would also be covered by the said bill.
“The bill seeks to raise the pay of the government personnel to be competitive with the market rates, strengthen the link between pay and performance through an enhanced performance-based bonus system, temper the cost of benefit while maximizing the benefits of employees and allow higher take-home pay particularly for government personnel belonging to the lower salary grades,” Belmonte said in his explanatory note.
The bill seeks to raise the most basic Salary Grade 1, or the administrative aide I position, from the current P9,000 pesos to as much as P11,732 at the end of the fourth tranche.
The bill also seeks to increase the monthly pay of the President, who has the highest salary grade 33, to P399,739 in the last year of the implementation. The salary of the president at the end of the first tranche would amount to P165,752.
The Vice President, Senate President, Speaker and Chief Justice would get P353,470 under salary grade 32 in the last tranche, according to the bill. Their pay at the end of the first tranche would amount to P148,478.
Senators and district/party-list representatives would get P295,191 in the last tranche under salary grade 31. Their pay at the end of the first tranche would be at P128,278.
The coverage of the total compensation includes basic salaries, allowances and benefits, standard allowances, specific-purpose allowances, incentives and performance-based pay, among others.
The bill also authorized the increase of the base pay of military personnel from the Department of National Defense, Department of Interior and Local Government, Philippine Coast Guard and the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority.
The bill seeks to increase the most basic salary grade for a candidate soldier to P12,764 and the highest salary grade for a general to P149,785 at the end of the fourth tranche.
READ: Congress adjourns without ratifying Salary Standardization Law
Belmonte filed his bill for SSL after the 16th Congress hit a deadlock in passing a consolidated version of the SSL 2015.
Former President Benigno Aquino III signed an executive order instead to increase the pay of government workers. With Kathryn Baylon, INQUIRER.net trainee/RAM
READ: Aquino signs order increasing pay of gov’t employees