The House Committee on Ways and Means approved on Monday, May 10, the grant of hazard pay to members of the government prosecution service even as it rejected a Department of Finance bid to subject the allowance to outright income tax deduction.

Instead, the ways and means panel chaired by Albay Rep. Joey Sarte-Salceda agreed to impose tax on hazard pay amount in excess of a P90,000 cap.

The committee approved the still unnumbered version of a consolidated bill lifted from legislative proposals filed by Reps. Rufus Rodriguez (CDI, Cagayan de Oro City) and Ruwel Peter Gonzaga (PDP-Laban, Davao de Oro).

Rodriguez, a deputy speaker, filed House Bill 8675 or the Hazard Pay for Public Prosecutors Act proposing the grant to the country’s prosecutors a monthly hazard pay equivalent to 25 percent or their basic monthly salary.

In his bill, Rodriguez stressed that the hazard pay should not be subjected to tax.

The House official underscored the necessity of granting prosecutors additional allowance as he noted that in the past four years alone, eight members of the government prosecution service have been murdered.

He said the first victim was Mati City Prosecutor Rolando Acido who was shot dead while on his way to work on October 26, 2016. Acido was half-paralyzed due to stroke when killed.

The latest victim was Manila Chief Inquest Prosecutor Jovencio Senados whose car was strafed by unidentified gunmen on July 7, 2020. Despite the creation by law enforcement units of task forces to bring the killers to the bar of justice, the brutal murder remained unsolved.

“Further, there are at least two other prosecutors who were attacked but fortunately survived, Prosecutor Manuel Tesiorna and Prosecutor Jesephone Olivar,” said Rodriguez.

The deputy speaker chided the DOF’s position when it insisted that taxes be imposed on the proposed allowance.

“Hazard pay can never be an income. It is an extraordinary assistance to prosecutors being killed and threatened with harm and you want this part to be taxed?” Rodriguez told the DOF representative during the virtual hearing of the ways and means panel.

“Everyday, they face criminals in court. Eight of them have been killed in just four years and two others nearly died,” he stated.

Aside from Acido and Senados, also slain were Prosecutor Johanne Noel Mingoa on January 11, 2017; Prosecutor Diosdado Azarcon, May 22, 2017; Asst. Prosecutor Maria Ronatay, July 18, 2017; Asst. Provincial Prosecutor Reymund Luna, September 29, 2017; Asst. Prosecutor Rogelio Velasco, May 11, 2018 and Prosecutor Mary Ann Castro, January 17, 2019.