Bicam on government pay hike to convene on Wednesday

MANILA, Philippines - The bicameral conference committee on the proposed government-wide salary increase will convene on Wednesday.

“We hope that by that time, we have a report from the Department of Budget and Management,” Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, who chairs the House of Representatives appropriations committee, said yesterday.

Ungab jointly chairs the conference panel with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who heads the Senate civil service committee.

The planned salary increase is contained in the proposed Salary Standardization Law (SSL) 4, the fourth version of a multi-year pay hike program for the bureaucracy. The increase was supposed to take effect last Jan. 1.

The House and the Senate have passed divergent versions of the proposed SSL-4. The senators’ version includes military and police retirees in the planned salary increase, while the House version does not.

Ungab said the inclusion of military and police retirees would cost an additional P20 billion, on top of the P58 billion the 2016 national budget allocates for the first-year implementation this year of the four-year pay hike program.

Where to source the additional P20 billion is the subject of the report the conference panel expects from the DBM, he said.

Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez urged Senate and House conferees to break their impasse on the proposed SSL-4.

“We should not let many Filipino families suffer a double whammy as a result of the non-passage of the SSL-4 and the veto of the Social Security System pension increase bill,” Romualdez said.