Salary standardization to make gov't workers at par with private employees
Tacloban City (October 13) -- The passage of the CSC and DBM-proposed new salary standardization law will not only increase the salaries of the government service providers but will make them at par with the workers of private companies.
Department of Budget and Management Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr., during his visit in Tacloban City to launch the Region’s PX Commissary, revealed that the bill will be filed in Congress before the end of the year.
The Salary Standardization Law, Secretary Andaya revealed, will solve the problem of low salaries and disparity among the more than one million strong force of government employees. He disclosed that the DBM made a conservative study comparing salaries in a medium-scale private corporation with those of government.
The study revealed that as the rank goes higher the disparity between the government and that of the private sector becomes bigger, Secretary Andaya intimated. The difference is very much apparent from Salary Grade 10 going up.
Andaya added that the higher the educational attainment, the more the government workers are “punished," seemingly referring to teachers, doctors and other professionals who receive salaries much lower than their counterparts in the private sector. This is the reason, he said, why some teachers end up working in Hong Kong as domestic helpers and why some government doctors are now nurses.
The Administration will not only increase the salary of state workers using the salary standard of the private sector as a benchmark, Secretary Andaya disclosed. It is also thinking of offering unholy hour compensation.
He added that the existing 33 salary grades will be trimmed down to 22 and that promotions to higher salary grades will be based on performance.
The total expenditure program for the proposed Salary Standardization Law is almost 100 billion pesos (P100 Billion) in four-year period. Secretary Andaya said, however, that for next year DBM has allotted P10.3 Billion for wage hike. "We also want to make sense of all our allowances, all the benefits we get...We want to make a general rule for everybody to follow to make sense of everything," Andaya said.
Secretary Andaya enjoined those present, to lobby with their respective congressmen and to explain to them the merit of the new salary standardization law. With an eye on the May 2007 elections, some politicians might come up with another scheme like across-the-board salary increases, which might bring in some votes but do not address real problems like the disparities in wages, Secretary Andaya said. (PIA 8) [top]
