DAVAO CITY, Philippines — Davao Teacher’s group is still hopeful despite the latest pronouncement from Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio that the city could not give an additional monthly allowance increase due to conflict with the law.
The mayor said that under the law, the city government is not allowed to give allowances to public school’s teachers through its Special Education Fund.
“The only thing we can do is to ask the City Legal Office to explore options of what other help we can provide for our teachers,” said Mayor Sara.
Reynaldo Pardillo, ACT- Davao City Division President said in an interview that the group is still looking for a positive result of their appeal for budget allotment since they have been talking with Committee on Finance chair Danilo Dayanghirang.
Pardillo told Davao Today that Councilor Dayanghirang has promised to look into a possible option where to get the fund to release the city-wide request of monthly local allowance of P2000 and quarterly rice subsidy of P2500.
He also said that one of the possible sources of the fund, according to Dayanghirang, is the P500 Million budget of the Local School Board, but, he added, that the group is still in the process of acquiring data from the board.
“Though it is one of the possible options, we are also hoping that the budget which will be intended for the teacher’s additional allowance and subsidy will come from the LGU fund. Thus, we wait and hope for a positive result.
In August, the teacher’s group ACT- Davao City chapter lobbied with the members of Sangguniang Panlunsod of Davao for support in aid of legislation to allocate enough budgets for the city’s General Fund.
They also started a signature campaign of both teaching and non-teaching staff of the Department of Education (DepEd) as a form of petition appealing to Mayor Sara to allocate fund for the requested monthly local allowance of P2000 and quarterly rice subsidy of P2500.
Another petition calling for a salary increase has also been circulated by the group to support the House Bill 7211 which seeks to raise the salaries of education workers to P16,000 for Salary Grade 1; P30,000 for Teacher 1; and P31,000 for Instructor 1.
“Right now we have submitted around 2,000 signatures to the city mayor’s office to show our strong appeal,” said Pardillo. (davaotoday.com)
