A group of education workers on Tuesday, Aug. 17, asked the Department of Education (DepEd) to recall its order on the computation of the proportional vacation pay (PVP) of public school teachers.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines was extremely dismayed after DepEd issued the PVP computation for public school teachers as stated in its Order No. 56 s. of 2021 released on Aug. 16.
The group lashed out on the agency for presenting a “devious computation” of the PVP. “Masyado nang pandurugas ito sa mga guro! (It's too much for the teachers!),” said ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio.
ACT criticized the directive for ordering the deductions on teachers’ vacation pay despite them rendering four months of overtime work --- which remained “uncompensated.”
“Ang DepEd ang may utang sa guro sa apat na buwan na overtime, bakit kakaltasan pa ang sweldo ngayong bakasyon sa bawat limang araw na pagliban noong pasukan?” (DepEd owes the teacher four months of overtime, why will the salary be deducted this holiday for every five days of absence during the school year?),” Basilio asked.
The PVP, ACT explained, is the “salary that teachers receive during school break, a counterpart leave benefit for lack of sick leave and vacation leave credits accorded to other government workers.”
Basilio added that PVP usually “operates on a calendar year framework” wherein the year is divided between the number of actual days served and the number of days for Christmas break plus school break.
“Our teachers have served for a total of 389 days in the last school year as compared to less than 300 days in previous years,” Basilio said. “This number even exceeded the days in a year, but DepEd cheated in its computation by not taking this fact into consideration,” he added.
Given this, ACT urged the DepEd to “compensate teachers’ days of overtime and recall this order that would effect salary deductions for absences.”
Meanwhile, ACT urged DepEd for the issuance of the guidelines for the compensation of teachers’ overtime --- as “promised” by the agency in a dialogue between the group, the DepEd and the Civil Service Commission (CSC) last June.
Basilio said that teachers were looking forward to “good news” but they were given more nuisance instead.
“Their commitment is to grant service credits for each day of overtime work, which teachers can use to off-set absences,” Basilio said.
“They even promised to request for funding from the budget agency to pay for the 25 percent overtime premium of teachers. Where did it go?” demanded Basilio.
Moreover, he urged DepEd to “respect” the labor rights of teachers which, he said, were “grossly violated” under distance learning implemented by the agency in School Year (SY) 2020-2021.
Basilio said that despite this order --- which declares 80 days of paid vacation for teachers --- DepEd continues to issue work instructions to teachers.
“After 13 months of grueling work in the last school year, overtime work for teachers is still on, again, without proper compensation,” Basilio said. “Our teachers are not slaves, this is plainly inhumane!” he added.
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2021/08/16/deped-issues-computation-of-public-school-teachers-proportional-vacation-pay-for-sy-2020-2021/