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By Angelo S. Samonte, Reporter
President Gloria Arroyo signed Thursday an
executive order granting a 10-percent salary increase for the
government’s 1.4 million workers effective July.
President Arroyo made the announcement after
attending a wage board meeting in San Fernando, Pampanga. She had
attended a similar wage board meeting in Quezon City.
The President also ordered Budget Secretary
Rolando Andaya Jr. to thresh out the details of the increase to make
the money available by July.
The long-planned 10-percent increase in the
basic pay is part of the multiyear schedule for the staggered
increase in public-sector wages, a policy forged in 2006.
Mrs. Arroyo made surprise visits to the two wage
boards meeting on the proposed wage increases in Pampanga and Quezon
City Thursday morning just to see “how things are going.”
The President observed the deliberations of the
Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Boards of the National
Capital Region (Metro Manila) and Region III (Central Luzon).
“I just want to see for myself how things are
going,” Mrs. Arroyo was quoted by Press Secretary Ignacio R. Bunye
as having told reporters when asked about her visiting rounds.
The President—who said she had hoped for wage
adjustments for labor on or before Labor Day—earlier ordered the
regional wage boards nationwide to hasten the wage-adjustment
process, “even if they have to work overtime on Labor Day, which
is a non-working day for the rest of the country.”
A 10-percent increase in the basic pay of
898,849 national government employees will cost P9.216 billion for
six months, and P2.844 billion for an estimated 277,905 soldiers,
policemen, firemen, jail guards and Coast Guard personnel for the
same period.
The pay increase lately ordered by Mrs. Arroyo
is the third in 30 months in the public sector.
Government employees welcomed Mrs. Arroyo’s
move, but said the increase of roughly P1,000 for an average teacher
“is almost nothing considering the high cost of commodities which
weakened our buying power and decreased the real value of our
salary.”
The state workers can consider themselves
luckier than those working in the private sector.
On the eve of Labor Day, the National Wages and
Productivity Commission said the private-sector employees will not
get a wage increase.
The commission cited the need for more time by
the Regional Wage Boards to study any petitions for a wage hike.
It said”by late May or early June,” the
boards would be able to come up with a decision on the petitions.
The wage boards have at least 30 days after the
end of public hearings to issue a wage order.
Instead of a wage increase, the Labor department
prepared a package of benefits for private workers, including tax
exemptions.
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