THE PRESIDENT called for the shooting or running over of loan sharks who are supposedly behind the debt crisis of teachers.
Is he instigating violence instead of addressing the real issue behind teachers’ discontent with the new salary standardization law? According to the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), this measly pay hike of around P1,500 per year until 2023 does nothing to raise teachers’ status and standards of living.
This almost maniacal penchant for killing and violence as the solution to everything is highly disturbing, and completely misses the point of teachers’ struggles and unrest. The loan sharks and the PLIs (private lending institutions) are not the main problem but the low salaries that make teachers extremely vulnerable to such. As they say, kapit sa patalim.
From the point of view of ACT, it is actually the government that has been feeding teachers to the wolves by maintaining their low salaries amid consistently rising costs of living. To correct and address this injustice, the government must heed the just demands of teachers. If the government is so hell-bent on killing opportunist loan sharks and PLIs, it can do so by substantially raising teachers and other civilian workers’ salaries so as to render these financial businesses necessary.
By the way, not a few eyebrows were raised by the Palace’s statements defending the doubling of cops and soldiers’ pay in light of the latter’s participation in relief efforts for victims of the Taal Volcano eruption. It clearly has no idea about the key role of teachers in times of disaster. Before and after a calamity strikes, teachers take part in preparing their schools for evacuees and in later providing psychosocial and even economic support to their students. They shell out money and any other resource they have to fast track the restoration of our classrooms so students can soon go back to school and regain some normalcy again. All this while being among the victims as well of these disasters.
Palace functionaries should go to the grounds and see for themselves how teachers and other civilian public workers go beyond their mandates and exemplify “above and beyond service to the people” despite the government’s continued neglect of their state.
