A group of education workers lamented the reported resignation of over a hundred 100 teachers in the Visayas to search for better job opportunities outside the country.

“It is heart-breaking how our teachers who started teaching full of good intentions to mentor our youth eventually got demoralized upon experiencing first-hand how the teaching profession is treated in our country,” said Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines Spokesperson Ruby Bernardo in a statement issued Friday, Sept. 30.

ACT shared the reports it received of more than 100 teachers in Compostela and Camotes Cebu --- as well as in Cebu City --- who “recently resigned from service and are processing their clearances as they prepare to leave the country for work abroad.”

To amplify the pay hike call as more colleagues apply for work abroad, public school teachers under the ACT Philippines launched SG15 human formations in Carlos Albert High School, Bagong Pag-asa Elementary School in Quezon City, and Dr. Arcadio Santos National High School in Paranaque City on Friday.

The human formations aimed to demonstrate teachers’ urgent demand for the upgrading of their salary levels as more and more teachers are leaving the service to apply for better-paying jobs overseas.

“All breadwinners know for a fact that a P25,000 monthly income is simply not enough to afford families a decent standard of living,” Bernardo said. “Continuously denying our teachers of just compensation only spells doom for the country,” she added.

Bernardo also noted that as the “brain drain” in the education system exacerbates, it becomes “more impossible for education to recover from the current learning crisis, and this will have cost implications to the state of our country in the coming years.”

As the country celebrates National Teachers’ Month (NTM) this September, the group called on the Marcos administration to “finally remedy this injustice against teachers.”

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., ACT said, promised during his electoral campaign that he would increase teachers’ salaries once elected to office.

“We challenge him to just do as he promised and spare us of the alibis that his officials are spewing to deny us of our long overdue pay hike,” Bernardo said.