Friday, September 21, 2007 Comelec in a bind over teachers' honoraria By Grace L. Plata
THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is facing another problem as public school teachers, who have acted as members of the receiving committee during the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) weekend registration in barangays, are now asking for their honoraria.
According to Comelec lawyer Gay Asuncion Enumerables, the funding for the teachers' honoraria is supposed to be funded by the National Youth Commission (NYC) that requested the deployment of the registration committees in the barangays to help facilitate the speedy registration.
Each of Davao City's 184 barangays had a two-man registration committee. This means, Comelec will have to produce the honoraria for 368 persons.
"We were assured that NYC will pay for it but we were recently told that NYC has no money for this (honoraria) at present," Enumerables said in Thursday's I-Speak forum.
This time, however, Comelec seems to face these problems alone as the City Government is not mandated by law to put in financial counterpart for the conduct of the SK and barangay elections.
"The city is only asked to take care of the information dissemination part," Enumerables said.
However, Enumerables said the Comelec central office has ongoing talks with NYC to resolve the problem at the soonest possible time.
She added that like in the past, public school teachers will be serving as officials in the upcoming elections on October 29.
