Teachers deserve salary hike

Is the public education sector making an unreasonable demand if they are now asking a minimum of P50,000 per month or nearly double for entry-level public school-teachers?Apparently not, especially considering the high cost of living nowadays, from food to fuel to basic services such as water and electricity.Last year, the Department of Budget and Management rejected a petition by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) to approve an entry-level pay for teachers from P27,000 to P36,000.The teachers’ group pointed out that uniformed personnel received a whopping 100 percent increase in 2019 under the Duterte administration, so why can’t the government do the same for public school teachers?The DBM said it could not approve the increase due to fiscal constraints, citing the high cost of increasing teachers’ and public workers’ pay and the salary distortion it would cause.This time, the Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives has refiled a bill seeking to nearly double entry-level public school teachers’ pay to P50,000.This, they say, is a “living wage” amount that’s just enough to keep up with the rising cost of goods and services.But what’s the response of the Department of Education to the proposed wage increase?It appears that the agency has deferred its position on salary increases for teachers pending a World Bank study it commissioned last year that will assess the feasibility and extent of pay hikes long sought by education groups.According to the DepEd, even prior to the refiling of a House bill, they had already engaged the World Bank to provide a study, not only on whether an increase should be made, but also on the ideal percentage of increases for the coming years based on projected inflation rates.But how long will the public school teachers have to wait so they can get a living wage?Understandably, education groups are piling up the pressure on government to immediately act on their urgent call for salary hikes for public school teachers.If the previous administration was able to give the police and the military pay hikes primarily, it would appear, to keep their loyalty, why can’t the current administration prioritize the welfare of public school teachers who after all are in the frontline of molding the minds of the Filipino youth so they can become productive and responsible citizens later on?