A group of teachers on Thursday, Sept. 30, lambasted the Department of Education (DepEd) over a memorandum released by the agency purportedly to compensate for the extra days and duties performed by teachers last school year under distance learning.
“Walang kwenta ang kautusan na ito, walang mapapakinabang ang mga guro dito! (This is useless, the teachers will not benefit from this),” Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines Secretary General Raymond Basilio said.
DepEd released on Sept. 28 a memorandum suspending the 15-day per year limit on the grant of service credits for School Year (SY) 2020–2021.
It also expanded the list of activities authorized for service credit claims to include distance learning-related duties.
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2021/09/30/teachers-allowable-service-credits-for-sy-2020-2021-expanded-deped/
However, the ACT was disappointed by the said memo and alleged that “it did not address the extra 87 working days that teachers” were made to work without due service credits and overtime pay.
“It is a non-solution to our teachers’ clamor for the grant of service credits and 25 percent overtime premium to compensate for the extra 87 working days that they were made to work under the extended school year,” Basilio said.
ACT lamented that the said directive “only allowed the expansion of service credit if services were rendered during weekends or holidays.”
The memo also required teachers to submit various documents to claim service credits for particular weekends and holidays when they rendered services, to include a letter of authority from the regional director or division superintendent, request by the school head, teachers’ individual daily log or verifiable attendance mechanism.
Citing the directives issued by DepEd, Basilio said teachers have rendered four months of work from June 1 to Oct. 3 --- even before the school year has officially started.
“What more proof do teachers need to show to prove that they have rendered extra 87 days of work last school year?” Basilio asked.
Basilio also stressed the importance of service credits to teachers as these can be used to offset absences due to illness or other personal emergencies, especially as they are not eligible for sick leave and vacation leave.
“DepEd is trying to confuse the issue to evade their responsibility of giving teachers what is due them,” Basilio claimed.
The issue of teachers’ extra work days rendered last school year has already been clarified in ACT’s dialogue with DepEd and Civil Service Commission (CSC) officials last June 16.
During the said meeting, ACT said the DepEd has admitted that teachers have rendered extra 87 days of work and has promised to justly compensate teachers for this.
“Just as how we teach our students the value of integrity, we demand for DepEd to honor their own words!” Basilio exclaimed.
With this, Basilio warned of mounting teachers’ protests in the next days towards the World Teachers’ Day celebration on Oct. 5 and beyond if the “DepEd continues to deny teachers of service credits and overtime pay.”
ACT said that teachers will “collectively claim” their overtime compensation by mounting a series of synchronized mass leaves to take the service credits due them.