The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said it will increase the honoraria of teachers serving as electoral boards in the 2025 national and local elections.
Comelec chairperson George Garcia said he will incorporate this in the Comelec’s budget, considering the additional tasks they will be asking from teachers, who will serve during the election season next year.
“In our budget, the Comelec will fight for additional honoraria of teachers across the board. They don’t have a tax exemption already and there’s already additional work for them? There are also new machines, which we will instruct them on, and they have no raise for that day,” Garcia said.
The Comelec is planning to implement early voting hours for vulnerable voters in the midterm elections, including persons with disabilities (PWDs), senior citizens, and pregnant women. Those sectors can vote from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.
Meanwhile, Comelec spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco said that the poll body’s time and motions studies revealed a five to six-hour increase in the post-processing of ballots, which will add more hours to the work of the teachers as poll workers.
Laudiangco said that the raise is part of their already-advancing budget proposal to the Department of Budget Management (DBM) for 2025.
In the last automated elections, there was a P9,000 honorarium for the members of the electoral board and P8,000 for the support staff.
The Comelec is yet to finalize the fixed rate for the additional honoraria.
