Why teachers are in debt?
By: RObERtO C. DESiN JR.,
Principal I-Don Jose Gaston Elementary School It’s not pleasing in the ears, but many say that teachers are “pala-utang”. It is a negative connotation that teachers especially those who are serving the public schools are branded undesirably by many.
One article in governance.neda.gov.ph, stated that public school teachers’ debts rose to P319B in 2019 from P301B last 2017. This included the P157.4 billion owed by teachers to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and P162 billion in outstanding loans to accredited private lenders. To note that teachers’ loans to unaccredited financiers were not included in the count, this sounds really alarming.
Following are the seven reasons why teachers end up with too many salary loans, as published in depedtambayan.org by Mark (2019): 1. To support the education of their children 2. Payment for housing loans 3. Travel and leisure 4. The higher cost of living (with very little salary increase) 5. Postgraduate studies 6. Support for extended families 7. Other emergency situations These reasons are true to many teachers. Finances in education, housing, emergencies, and most of all, support to extended families are the top priorities in their expenses.
Personally, I happened to talk to a fellow teacher having a really low net monthly salary. She explained that aside from having five kids to care for, she also provides for her mother and siblings since her father died years ago. She is just the only fortunate child in their familyto finished college education and landed a stable job as a public-school teacherand so she felt that she is destined to support them in any way. This scenario is common to many teachers. As they said, a teacher is “pamilya ng bayan”. Another reason for me why teachers are in debts is that, the are many organized legal syndicates that are enticing teachers to loan more. In times of need, they are so good in convincing teachers to go for a huge amount of loan rather than give proper financial advice. But this is the real world. That is their business after all. All we can do is just to control ourselves and remember that at the end of the day, overloading debts will not make our life easier, rather, it will produce additional burden if we don’t know how to handle it with care.( Contributed article)