SENATE President Tito Sotto said a one-month delay in the release of government employees’ salary hike will “not be too painful.”
Speak for yourself, Mr. Senate President. You are a government employee yourself, but your salary, benefits and perks are light years away from the low salaries of ordinary employees. For the Filipino workers, every single peso counts because most of us do not have anything else to rely on for our daily survival but the wages and salaries we receive in return for the work we turn in.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) should immediately release the final tranche of the salary increase due to government employees and stop making excuses. The law provides for the salary hike, and the funds are directly derived from the national budget – this means that the funds are meant for the increase of salaries of government employees and only for specific item.
DBM violates the law and the rights of government employees by continuing to withhold the remaining tranche of the salary increase – and to think that this already took a long process which began in 2016.
DBM and budget secretary Benjamin Diokno should not hold the salary hike of government employees hostage because Congress has failed to pass the 2018 budget. This is a flimsy, contrived excuse that also exposes the wrong priorities of the government.
Militant labor groups such as the Kilusang Mayo Uno already have strong opposition to the budget, how it has been deliberated upon, and how it is being allocated. It is not a budget that gives priority to the needs and welfare of the workers. In fact it takes more away from public health, housing, education, transportation, and other social services for the working poor. The budget does not contribute to the sectors that will help the working poor improve their situation such as developing the agricultural industry and assisting Filipino-owned small and medium enterprises.
We hope that Senator Sotto and all legislators would support the call of the government employees for the release of the final tranche instead of keeping on the safe side of the ongoing political clash between DBM and Congress, and making excuses for it.
