Solons seek House probe on DepEd order lifting cap on pay cuts

For protesting teachers, Education Secretary Leonor Briones is the Grim Reaper who led to the death of their dignity and family needs. Photo courtesy of ACT Teachers Party-list.

The ACT Teachers Party-list has asked the House of Representatives to investigate the legality of a Department of Education order that allowed more of already underpaid public school teachers’ salaries to go to loan deductions, causing some of them to take home only a few hundred pesos for their daily needs.

House Resolution No. 1342, filed by Reps. Antonio Tinio and France Castro, said Secretary Leonor Briones’ DepEd Order No. 38, series of 2017, was ultra vires or issued beyond her legal power.

The resolution said the DepEd order was contrary to the 2017 General Appropriations Act’s provision mandating that an employee’s monthly net take-home pay cannot be reduced by loan deductions to below the P4,000 threshold.

It also cited the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, which provided that deductions cannot be made from salaries unless they’re specifically authorized by law.

The resolution noted that the net take-home pay threshold was meant to protect small government employees and ensure they still have salaries for their daily needs and contingencies.

Briones’ action had the effect of “denying teachers and DepEd personnel of the protection accorded by law.”

Her order allegedly benefited only the private lending institutions “guaranteed to be paid” under DepEd’s Automatic Payroll Deduction System to the detriment of teachers and DepEd personnel, the resolution pointed out.

The order allegedly led to “more or less half” the public school teachers and DepEd personnel receiving a net take-home pay of P100 to P900, way below the P4,000 threshold, for the month of October.

In a separate statement on Friday, the lawmakers also urged DepEd to immediately refund the “arbitrary deductions” on the salaries of the affected employees.

Although the agency had since issued DepEd Order No. 55 that maintained the P4,000 threshold, Castro said “an investigation must ensue to hold the DepEd’s leadership accountable for its arbitrary issuance of DO No. 38.”

“Damage has already been done to thousands of the department’s personnel and their families,” she said. “Briones placed the lives of its personnel at stake, effectively sentencing the teachers and their families to hunger with only a few hundred pesos at their disposal for several days while still expecting them to carry on with their duties and responsibilities in school.”

“We will intensify our fight for salary increase. The vicious cycle of indebtedness of government employees, majority of whom are teachers, stems from the government’s refusal to provide decent and living wage that would allow them to provide for their families,” Tinio added.