Palace to set aside P10-B for pay hike
TACLOBAN CITY (13 October) -- Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. said the Department of Budget and Management would file in Congress before yearend a Salary Standardization Law III that would not only raise but also make the salaries of more than one million government workers closer or at par with those in the private sector.
For the next year, DBM has allotted P10.3 billion for the wage increases but the total expenditure program for salary standardization over the next four years is almost P100 billion, Andaya said.
Low salary is the reason why some teachers end up working in Hong Kong as domestic helpers and why some government doctors are now nurses, Andaya said.
“The higher your educational attainment, the more you are punished,” Andaya said, referring to teachers, doctors and other professionals who receive salaries much lower than their counterparts in the private sector.
“We will now try to move towards [solving the problem], to increase the salary [of state workers] using as a benchmark the private sector.”
But Andaya said that SSL III is not only about salary increases. “There will be a lot of changes, not only a salary increase per se, but also ‘unholy hour compensation,’ and a better promotion system.” (PIA) [top]
