LAWMAKERS last Thursday urged the Duterte administration to allocate a portion of the P130- billion expected revenue from the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law for the salary increase of public-school teachers.
Party-list Rep. Rodel M. Batocabe of president of AKO-Bicol, the Party-list Coalition; and House Committee on Appropriations Vice Chairman Luis Raymund F. Villafuerte Jr. of the Second District of Camarines Sur said the country’s 692,287 public-school teachers should benefit from the taxes to be collected following the implementation of the TRAIN law.
“As a son of a teacher when the salary of a teacher was ridiculously low, this is now a cause for jubilation to all our teachers,” Batocabe said.
Increasing the salary of teachers would make them more competitive with their counterparts in the Asean, he said.
“While the lot of our teachers has considerably improved since my mother’s time, doubling their salary will certainly boost their morale [and, at the same time], improve productivity and enhance the quality of education in the country,” Batocabe added.
Villafuerte, meanwhile, said raising the salary of teachers should be included in the priorities of Congress.
“With the higher revenue take from TRAIN, the government will have fiscal space to fund a salary hike for teachers,” Villafuerte said. “Our teachers deserve a pay hike in the same way that our men and women in uniform have been given their salary upgrades following [Duterte’s] approval of Congress’s joint resolution.”
Villafuerte added the government needs to improve the living standards of Filipino teachers, given the key role they play in human-capital development.
Following the salary increase of soldiers and policemen, the Palace last Tuesday said President Duterte wants to double the salary of public-school teachers. But Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno said the salary increase for teachers “is not a priority at this time.”
Party-list Rep. France L. Castro of ACT Teachers welcomed President Duterte’s intent to grant the long-overdue demand for the salary increase of public school teachers.
“This development only showed the President eventually yielded to the pressures of our long- running collective struggle for salary increase, despite the consistent opposition by Budget Secretary Diokno and Education Secretary [Leonor M.] Briones,” Castro said.
The solon also slammed Diokno for saying increasing the salaries of public-school teachers “is not a priority,” and that salaries across all government personnel will only be reviewed after the fourth tranche of salary increase implemented in 2019.
“It is only just that the administration immediately grant the well-deserved substantial salary increase for public-school teachers and to set the minimum wage for government employees to P16,000,” she said.
“TRAIN law’s higher taxes on basic commodities and services only cancel out the relief from lowering of personal-income tax,” she said.