Even without extending the voting hours, a group of education workers on Monday, May 9 urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to pay for the extra hours the teachers spent while serving as poll workers for the 2022 elections.

Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Secretary General Raymond Basilio said that teachers have been in the precincts for more than 13 hours.

“Walang katiyakan kung kailan sila makakatapos sa gawain dahil natambak ang mga balotang kailangang ipasok sa mga VCM samantalang wala ring katiyakan kung anong oras pa magkakaroon ng VCM sa ilang presinto (There is no certainty as to when they will be able to finish the work because the ballots that need to be entered in the VCMs are piled up while there is also no certainty as to what time there will be VCM in some precincts),” he added.

ACT also pressed Comelec to grant overtime pay to all members of the electoral board whose poll duty hours will be further extended due to massive machine breakdown.

The group pointed out that with or without the extension of voting hours, the work hours of electoral boards in precincts that experienced hours of machine failure will unavoidably be extended as they have to feed to the vote-counting machine all filled ballots that were entrusted to them by the voters.

The group added that a few minutes before the set end of voting, many precincts still had no VCMs after the Comelec had pulled out malfunctioning machines and had not returned or replaced them with functioning ones.

“Sobrang abuso na sa kanilang paggawa kung hindi sila bibigyan ng karagdagang kompensasyon sa mas mahabang oras ng pagtatrabaho (It would be too much abuse for them to work if they are not given additional compensation for longer working hours),” Basilio added.

ACT had already forwarded their demand for overtime pay for EB members in anticipation of extended poll work hours based on the experience of previous elections.

However, ACT said that the Comelec had “rejected the call” --- arguing that its finance policies prohibit the Commission from providing overtime pay to EB members as they are not regular employees of COMELEC.

“Instead of hiding behind the technicalities, the Comelec and all concerned government agencies should exert all efforts to give justice to our hard-working electoral board members who are bearing the brunt of Comelec’s ineptitude,” Basilio said.