Add’l honoraria for teachers depends on availability of funds

MANILA – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Sunday said additional honoraria for teachers who served extra hours to address technical glitches and other issues during the May 9 polls will depend on the availability of funds.

“First condition is the availability of funds…Second, we have to make sure that any grant of the Commission for additional honoraria will be compliant with DBM [Department of Budget and Management] rules, accounting rules, auditing rules, and COA [Commission on Audit] rules,” acting Comelec spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco said in a press briefing on Sunday.

“It would be unjust if we could not at the very least give additional honoraria to compensate for their additional pagod at ‘yung delay na inabot po nila (exhaustion and the delays they experienced),” he added.

Currently, the additional honorarium is pending approval of the Comelec commissioners en banc.

Laudiangco said the additional honoraria would not be lower than PHP2,000.

“Basing on 2019, I believe the figure then was PHP2,000 if I’m not mistaken. That’s 2019. There’s no decision yet as to the 2020 election,” he said.

The Department of Education (DepEd) earlier proposed to the Comelec an additional PHP3,000 pay for teachers who served more hours on election day.

DepEd also said that they are asking for the release of election duty honoraria, among other allowances, on or before May 24.

The May 9 elections were marred by the malfunctioning of nearly 1,900 vote-counting machines (VCMs) across the country, prompting Comelec to decide to discard them in future polls.

Some voters were still in line to cast their votes past 7 p.m. when polling precincts were supposed to close shop.