Solons join Teachers’ National Day of Action

ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED TEACHERS PRESS RELEASE
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QUEZON CITY — On World Teachers’ Day and National Teachers’ Day, ACT Teachers Party-List Representatives Antonio Tinio and France Castro will march to Mendiola along with about 2,000 teachers who will stage a protest action against the overworked yet underpaid status of teachers amidst TRAIN-induced inflation.

“The Duterte government has failed to address the pressing problems of the people, including the teachers who demand for higher salaries and humane working conditions,” Tinio said.

“Five decades had passed since the crafting of the International Labor Organization/United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers in 1966 but much of its provisions remain unfulfilled. Filipino teachers are receiving meager salaries, struggling to make ends meet and compensating for the needs of the chronically underfunded public education system.”

“We are in solidarity with the educators staging nationwide simultaneous protest actions of different forms from motorcades, candle lighting protests, and mass leave to depict their plight. Today, teachers remind the Duterte administration that it should be taking concrete steps to advance teachers’ rights and welfare, to address price hikes, among others rather than inventing destabilization plots and raising red scares to silence dissent,” he added.

“Teachers’ protests nationwide aim to hold President Duterte, Department of Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, and Department of Education Secretary Leonor Briones accountable for the implementation of anti-teacher policies. Public school teachers are suffering under the oppressive Results-based Performance Management System and Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (RPMS-PPST), loan-related problems, work overload, and various non-teaching duties,” Castro lamented.

“These predatory schemes that extract educators’ labor in exchange of salaries that are merely enough for their subsistence have to stop. We have filed House Bill 7211 for the enactment of P30,000 entry-level salary of public school teachers, P31,000 for instructors and P16,000 as the minimum for employees in the government service. Amidst the opposition to this measure by Duterte, Briones, Diokno and the rest of the economic managers, teachers are even more adamant in demanding for their immediate pay hike,” she announced.

“The Duterte administration should heed our long-standing demands for education worker’s salary increase, better working conditions and higher education budget. On World Teachers’ Day and National Teachers’ Day, we urge our colleagues in both Houses of Congress to support measures that aim to advance teachers’ welfare. We call on our fellow educators and the Filipino people to carry on with the fight,” the solons ended. # nordis.net