Loren pushes for gov’t employees’ amelioration pay

Senate Majority Leader Loren Legarda asked President Arroyo yesterday to restore the amelioration pay of lowly paid government employees to enable them to cope with high prices of basic commodities.

"With a stroke of pen, President Arroyo could undo the scrapping in 1999 of this incentive mechanism intended to boost the morale of the rank and file in government. The P7,500 or so that each government employee used to receive may not be much, but at least it showed them that the government cared," Legarda said.

In October 1999, ousted President Joseph Estrada, through Executive Order 87, stopped giving state workers the so-called amelioration pay, which was equal to a month’s salary of a government employee or not less than P7,500.

Legarda disclosed that in the proposed 2004 budget, some P3.5 billion is allotted for the full implementation of the salary adjustment of officers and members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

She said lawmakers would use "a fine-toothed comb in scrutinizing the P865 billion proposed national budget for 2004" to rationalize the breakdown in appropriations and to find out how to best use the country’s meager resources.