Gov’t to fulfill promise to double cops, soldiers’ pay by Jan. 2018

Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno on Tuesday said the promise of President Rodrigo Duterte to double the salaries of state forces would happen in January 2018.

“We will be able to comply with the desire of the President to double their take-home pay by January 2018,” Diokno said in a Palace briefing.

Aside from the expected pay hike in 2018, he said the military and police would receive another pay hike this January as part of the second tranche of the government’s salary standardization.

“We are now in the second tranche of our four-tranche salary adjustment. As you now, we gave the salary increase last year. And there will be another salary increase this year, both for civilians, military and police,” he said.

The civilians referred to by the budget chief were public school teachers and government nurses.

“They are part of the salary standardization. They are part of these tranches. But it does not mean that we will double their salary because right now the pay of public school teachers are much higher than of private school teachers,” he said.

The increase in pay of government officials and state forces was through the executive order 201 signed by former President Benigno Aquino III after Congress failed to ratify a new Salary Standardization Law (SSL).

“The previous administration had a downpayment in 2016. And we are going to honor it and in fact… But you know, there’s some…[there] maybe a legal defect because it did not go through Congress, it’s just incorporated in the budget,” he said.

“But [in] 2017, there’s already an allocation in the 2017 budget for a salary increase, second tranche. But we will go to Congress and ask for authority,” he added./rga