WHY TEACHERS HAVE LAWFUL TWO MONTHS PROPORTIONAL VACATION PAY
WHINDEE G. CABANGON
Public school teachers have Proportional Vacation Pay (PVP) because they are not entitled to the annual leave credits with pay that include the 5 days mandatory leave, 3 days special leave, 15 days vacation leave, birthday leave, and 15 days sick leave which are enjoyed by other government employees such as the Secretary. The PVP is not a special privilege but is just an equivalent of the leave privileges enjoyed by other public servants, but is in fact widely violated.
The teachers cannot afford to get sick leave. If they get ill and they do not have service credits, being absent will entail salary deduction. The other government employees, on the other hand, if happened to run a fever, could file for sick leave with his salary contact.
In spite of the PVP, teachers in reality could barely enjoy their rightful rest during school break because they are required to attend to numerous clerical duties, various meetings, seminars left and right, summer reading camps, and Brigada Eskwela from which they do not extra pay. True that teachers can gain service credits for the official activities and duties that they are made to attend on their days of vacation. However, they are only entitled to a maximum of 15 days service credit per year while extra days that they are called work during vacation are way pass this number. Such service credits and are often not utilized due to the teacher’s heavy workload. Further, unlike the Secretary and other government employees, the teacher may not monetized their service credits upon termination of service in government.
There, in fact, are blatant violations to the labor rights of a teacher. Furthermore, according to the Magna Carta of Public School Teachers, a teacher should only be given six hours of teaching load everyday as they still have a number of ancillary duties to perform. A large number of teachers today, however, are still made to teach for eight hours daily due to insufficient number of teachers and voluminous work. Teachers are also assigned to do tasks of a librarian, clerk, guidance councilor, nurse, and even security guard due to lack of education support personnel in the school level. Amidst all this, the DBM refuses to grant the Department of Education enough teaching and non-teaching items.
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The author is Teacher III at Sto. Niño Elementary School, San Simon District