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Sunday, November 23, 2003
Government workers, teachers tell GMA, Congress: Pay us P3000 more!
By Dante M. Fabian
ANGELES CITY -- Government employees in Central Luzon have renewed their demand for a P3000 across-the-board salary increase for all civil servants.
The employees - from the Alliance of Concerned Teachers-Central Luzon (ACT-CL) and the Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees-Central Luzon (COURAGE-CL) - want President Arroyo and the Congress to tackle the issue at the resumption of the session in both houses of Congress.
Fabian G. Hallig, ACT-CL secretary-general, and David Mayo, COURAGE-CL chair, said President Arroyo had long ignored their demands for salary increases but upgraded the salaries and benefits of members of the military, the police force and selected officials of the judiciary.
"The government keeps on telling us that it has no funds for salary increase or for higher budget for social services. But it is always able to accommodate the demand of the IMF and the World Bank to automatically appropriate massive funds for debt payment and servicing," Hallig said.
He pointed out that this onerous system is embodied in the existing PD 1177, which mandates automatic budgetary appropriations for external debt.
Hallig said that for 2004, more than 60% of the proposed budget of P864.8 billion is already automatically appropriated, citing figures recently disclosed by Sen. Ralph Recto that reflected a total appropriation of P542.2 billion for government debt.
He also claimed that in the current budget, more than 50% has been earmarked for the same purpose although only P228.7 billion was reflected in the spending program.
"Undeniably, these are huge sums of money which could have been used for social expenditures especially for education, health, housing, land reform and agriculture subsidy, livelihood and poverty alleviation and for salary increases of all government and private employees," he added.
Hallig noted that in spite of this lopsided scheme, the government failed to bring down public debt but even caused it to swell to a staggering P3.158 trillion as of August simply because of excessive borrowings of the Arroyo administration. Also, the budget deficit has ballooned to P217 billion.
"With this, government employees should brace themselves against intensified implementation of cost-cutting measures which translate to wage freeze, massive layoffs and reorganization of government bureaucracy," he warned.
Mayo, on the other hand, said unabated graft and corruption further deplete the already meager budget allocated for the different departments and agencies of the government.
He estimated that anywhere from P40 billion to over P160 billion is lost annually to graft and corruption.
He clarified that big time corruption occurring in GSIS, DepEd, DPWH, Bureau of Customs, BIR and other government offices and agencies, including those high-level scams of which the presidential couple is accused of, are but symptoms of the country's deteriorating fiscal situation.
"Despite this situation, ACT-CL and COURAGE-CL are asking the Arroyo government to grant their demands, believing it can find the resources to augment the P864.8 billion proposed budget just as it was able to find billions for selective increases granted to the military and police, as well as other unprogrammed expenditures," he said.
At the same time, Mayo said they are calling on Congress to assert its political will by significantly reducing public debt appropriations and realigning the funds to finance salary increments and provide a higher budget for social services and to repeal PD 1177 for being unjust and anti-people.
They also called on all government teachers and employees to join hands and move as one with ACT-CL and COURAGE-CL in pushing for these demands, appealing also to court employees to get involved and not just content themselves with the COLA they are receiving under the Judiciary Development Fund, which Hallig described as deceptive, divisive, anti-poor and prone to corruption.
Hallig explained that the system of internal fund generation, which includes the JDF, was deliberately designed not only to unload the national government of heavy budgetary burdens.
He explained that this is also to divide and weaken the ranks of its employees, even misleading them from demanding basic pay increases by establishing a system of sharing from funds generated through this scheme.
"In the case of the public school teachers, the government adopted the practice of sourcing their benefits from savings, instead of providing funds for these in the General Appropriations Act," Hallig said.
(November 23, 2003 issue)
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