With no where else to run to, teachers decided to ask help from the budget department to urgently address the “grave insufficiency” of state subsidy to the government’s distance learning program as well as the “funding snags” that deprived employees of the Department of Education (DepEd) of prompt release of just benefits.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), in a letter addressed to the Budget Secretary Wendel E. Avisado dated Feb. 2, 2021, pressed for the need to adopt a “supplementary budget to education” given the P11 billion slash in the approved 2021 education budget as compared to the amount proposed by the DBM in the 2021 National Expenditures Program.
The group stressed that the “stark problems” that met learners and teachers in the first grading period of the school year and the worsening crisis in education is mainly due to the “poorly-funded and ill-equipped” distance learning program.
ACT Secretary-General Raymond Basilio said that while the Constitution mandates for the grant of the highest budgetary allocation to education for the purpose of ensuring the delivery of accessible and quality education to the youth, “the government is sorely failing on this aspect as obviously, there is a serious crisis on the access to and quality of education amid the pandemic.”
Originally, ACT said that the DBM proposed a P568 billion budget for the DepEd for 2021 but was only allotted P556 billion in the government’s approved budget.
“We turn to DBM to once and for all resolve the funding problems for the grant of benefits to teachers and education support personnel, which have been weighing heavily on our education workers’ economic state and pulling down on their morale,” Basilio said. “Our meager salaries can no longer take the overtaxing distance learning expenses,” he added.
ACT has been demanding for a P1,500 internet allowance but this is not possible at this time due to “lack of funding and legal basis.” However, the group countered that these concerns can easily remedied by the DBM and President Duterte if “only they would give education enough importance.”
Basilio further cited that DepEd employees only received P6,190 in Service Recognition Pay for 2020 which is “significantly lower” than the ordered grant of uniform P10,000 amount to all government employees - as well as the “overly delayed approval” of the 2019 Performance-Based Bonus (PBB) of DepEd employees.