Teachers' group seeks additional compensation for poll duty

Saying their colleagues risked much to help ensure the success of the May 10 elections, militant teachers on Thursday sought an added P2,000 compensation for poll duty. The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to give the added pay to teachers who served on the Boards of Election Inspectors (BEIs) in the elections. "The public school teachers who served as BEIs are rightly being hailed as heroes for their performance on May 10. We praise their professionalism, patience, and sense of patriot duty. In this regard, we call on the Comelec to give teachers an additional P2,000 in recognition of the sacrifices they made to ensure the success of the country’s first automated elections," said ACT national president Antonio Tinio, in an article on the ACT website. With some 220,000 BEIs nationwide, ACT said the added P2,000 may cost government some P440 million. "It’s a substantial amount but our teachers deserve it. Comelec has spent over P7 billion on the machines, but far too little for the people who made them work," he said. Tinio said teachers had to put in extra days of work due to the massive recall of wrongly programmed memory cards and retesting of precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines in the days leading up to Election Day. At the same time, Tinio said the teachers had to cope with the one-hour extension of voting hours and the clustering of precincts, where three BEIs attended to up to 1,000 voters. And even as the group pushed for the additional compensation, ACT lamented that many of the teachers who pulled poll duty have yet to be paid for the services they rendered for the elections. "We’ve received reports that teachers in Manila, Malabon, Navotas, as well as in Baguio, Mindoro, Bacolod, Cebu, Bohol, and Siquijor have not yet received their election service honoraria," said Tinio. "Considering the sacrifices they’ve made, the least the government can do is to ensure prompt payment. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many places nationwide," he added. — RSJ/LBG, GMANews.TV