Govt workers to get pay raise in February — Sotto
Credit to Author: JAVIER J. ISMAEL| Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2019 16:58:47 +0000
SENATE President Vicente Sotto 3rd on Friday assured the more than 1.5 million workers in the public sector that the last tranche of salary increase under the Salary Standardization Law will be implemented as scheduled in February.
Sotto made the assurance as he expressed optimism that the Senate and the House of Representatives would be able to hammer out a consolidated version of the 2019 budget bill this January.
In a text message to The Manila Times, the Senate president said they would have President Rodrigo Duterte sign the 2019 budget measure by the end of January.
He added that he was confident that all would be executed in February, including salary adjustments for civilian and military personnel programmed for 2019.
Earlier, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno warned that reenacting the national budget for 2019 would slow down economic growth and would adversely affect public infrastructure and poverty-alleviation programs.
“Under a reenacted budget, no new infrastructure projects can start because the Capital Outlays component of the previous year’s budget cannot be deemed reenacted,” Diokno said.
He added that personnel services and the maintenance and other operating expenses would be reenacted based on the 2018 level, which means that the salary adjustments for civilian and military personnel programmed for 2019 would have to wait.
Meanwhile, the authorization for the salary increase for civilian government workers and military personnel was mandated by laws that are tied to the passage of the General Appropriations Act.
Under the proposed 2019 budget, a total of P121.7 billion has been earmarked for the salary rate adjustments.
At least P51.7 billion of the amount was allocated for the fourth installment of wage increases under the Salary Standardization Law, which covers civilian employees.
For uniformed personnel, P70 billion has been set aside for the second installment of salary increases mandated by the same law.
The legal basis for the four-stage implementation of the salary adjustments was Executive Order 201 issued by President Benigno Aquino 3rd in February 2016 shortly before the national elections.
Pay adjustments prior to that were made from 2009 to 2012 through Executive Order 811 issued by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, now Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The document governing salary adjustments for personnel in the Defense, Interior, Transportation and Environment departments was Joint Resolution 1 passed by Congress and signed by President Duterte in January 2018.
The post Govt workers to get pay raise in February — Sotto appeared first on The Manila Times Online.