Explanation sought on bonus delay

With funding allocation as early as fiscal year 2016, the performance-based bonus (PBB) expected by teachers as incentive for their performance for school year 2016-2017 is still in the “process” and the teachers do not know why.

We believe that there is no reason for the government to further delay its release.

There are a lot of speculations going on which actually could not help to solve the issue. Last week, TDC members troop to DBM main offices to condemn the statement of DBM Secretary Ben Diokno that teachers’ salary increase is not a government priority. They were able to have a dialogue with some officials and ask the status of the PBB, which according to the DBM is now in the hands of the DepEd.

It only reinforced our belief that indeed, we are not priority, because even this “little” incentive due for us was not prioritized. Now once and for all, we believe that we deserve an explanation why all these happen. We call on both the secretaries of the DBM and DepEd to comment on this in public to end all the speculations circulating in the field.

PBB is an incentive under the Executive Order 80 of 2012 which was further reinforced through Executive Order 201, both from the Aquino administration and intends to recognize the efforts of the agencies and its employees and thus, a form of reward. PBB has been very controversial because of the unfair assessment of the performance in the field, which could be a source of corruption, division and dishonesty.

The release of the PBB is always delayed since school year 2012-2013, but this is the first time that it reached the next fiscal year. The PBB is supposedly given by the end of the year, but the DepEd uses school year as its rating period. Thus, the PBB for FY 2012 incentive was only released in August 2013, the same fate happen for PBB of teachers for the succeeding years.--