Teachers who served in polls to get additional P2,000 allowance

MANILA, Philippines - An official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said yesterday teachers who took part in the random manual audit would receive an additional P2,000 in honoraria.

Comelec Commissioner Lucenito Tagle said poll officials have decided to increase the allowance of teachers in recognition of their efforts in the random manual audit intended to check on the accuracy of counts of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.

Tagle said the decision to raise teachers’ pay was made during a meeting of the commission yesterday morning.

Before this, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) had called on the Comelec to increase from P4,000 to P6,000 the honoraria of teachers who served as Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) in the polls.

The ACT complained that the honoraria were raised by P1, 000 from the P3,000 that BEIs have been receiving since 2004.

“The teachers’ workloads this year were heavier because of the random manual audit and the two testing and sealing procedures they had to do on the PCOS machines,” the group said.

It also demanded that the honoraria be released soon, as a majority of the BEIs have not received theirs as of Thursday. 

50% raise sought

After serving efficiently in the successful automated elections last Monday, public school teachers’ groups yesterday sounded a call for the Comelec to increase their election duty compensation by 50 percent.

Fidel Fababier, secretary-general of the Action and Solidarity for the Empowerment of Teachers (ASSERT), said teachers deserve a poll duty honorarium increase, considering the heavier workload given to them by Comelec.

Fababier said they bravely served as members or heads of the BEI and dealt with the huge turnout of voters, especially in areas where there were few voting precincts. 

He stressed that the success of the election was attributed mainly to teachers who faithfully undertook their respective duties, no matter how risky to them, on election day.

He said in spite of the logistical disaster of Comelec clustering a thousand or more voters in one precinct, teachers succeeded in carrying out their work.

Due to the automated election system, the Comelec established only 76,000 clusters of precincts, compared to the previous elections of over 240,000 precincts.

“Comelec would do us more good by increasing the compensation and doing so promptly,” said Fababier.

Benjamin Basas, national chairman of the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC), said their group is also seeking higher poll duty pay.

“It is quite ironic that everyone, even the Comelec, agrees that the success of the recently concluded elections was largely attributed to the teachers, yet the compensation for their hard work is not prioritized,” said Basas, who also served as BEI chairman in Caloocan City.

In a memorandum of agreement between the Comelec and the Department of Education (DepEd), teachers who served as BEI would be entitled to a P3,000 honorarium, P500 allowance for the sealing of book of voters, P500 for the sealing and testing of PCOS machines and P300 for transportation.