By Vanne Elaine Terrazola
Two Senate committees have recommended the approval of the proposed Salary Standardization Law (SSL) seeking to modify and increase the basic salaries of government workers starting next year.
Senate of the Philippines building (Senate of the Philippines official Facebook)
Senator Ramon Revilla Jr., chair of the Senate committee on civil service, government reorganization, and professional regulation, sponsored on Tuesday afternoon Senate Bill No. 1219, which proposes another round of salary increases for civilian government employees in continuation of the current SSL that is set to end this year.
The bill was contained in Committee Report No. 26, which is also signed by Committee on Finance chairman Sen. Sonny Angara and 13 other senators.
SB No. 1219 is a consolidation of five measures filed by Senators Ralph Recto, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Joel Villanueva, and Christopher Go.
In his speech, Revilla said the Senate panels had a hard time reconciling the varying proposals of his colleagues, as they also had to wait for the executive department's recommendation on the matter.
In the end, they adopted the Department of Budget and Management (DBM's) recommendations as approved by President Rodrigo Duterte.
Under the committee-approved bill, the salary adjustment will be implemented in four tranches starting January 2020 and shall increase every year until 2023.
It grants government employees under Salary Grade (SG) 10 to SG 15 the highest increase, ranging from 20 to 30 percent. The lowest increase is eight percent for those under SG 23 to SG 33.
Revilla said this will address the issue of inequality in the previous SSLs where the majority of government employees received small increases while those who are high-earning employees received hefty increases.
While he supported the pay raise, Recto said he has reservations on the rates being proposed, questioning the availability of government resources to fund the salary increase, particularly those of workers in provincial and local government units. He said he hopes to thresh out the issues during their plenary debates on the bill.
Angara said the Senate has appropriated P32 billion in the General Appropriations Bill of 2020 in anticipation of the implementation of the SSL 5 next year.
The proposed SSL 5 is expected to benefit more than 1.4 million government employees, including public teachers and nurses.
The current SSL was implemented through an executive order signed by former President Benigno Aquino III in 2016 giving salary increases of government employees in four tranches until 2019.