Briones stands firm on SEF, salary hike
PASIG CITY, March 10, 2017 – Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones maintained her stand on the issuance of Joint Circular (JC) No. 1, series of 2017 on the Revised Guidelines on the Use of the Special Education Fund (SEF) in providing additional honoraria to nationally hired teachers by local government units (LGUs).
According to the Education chief, there are LGUs, specifically in Metro Manila, that source allowances and/or honoraria both form their General Fund, which is perfectly legal, and from the SEF, which the law mandates to be spent on school improvements. However, there are LGUs unable to grant such due to lack of allocation in their General Fund.
According to Briones, she has discussed the proposal to hike the basic pay of public school teachers during a Cabinet meeting, and pointed out, “Yung tumatanggap ngayon ng P35,000 will be getting P70,000, pina-compute namin, ang pinaka-conservative na estimate is we will need P350 billion more. I don’t know how the Secretary of Finance will react to that, he has to raise P350 billion more.”