Higher poll duty honorarium for teachers, BEIs proposed
A party-list solon is pushing for higher election service honorarium for teachers and members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) for the coming Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections this October.
ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro raised this proposal at the last hearing of the committee on suffrage and electoral reforms hearing in Congress.
In her proposal, members of the BEI should have higher net take home honorarium for their election service.
She said the Commission on Elections should give P10,000 net honorarium to the chairperson and P9,000 for the members.
“Comelec chairman George Garcia agreed with me on this and said that he would also support the move to increase the BEI’s honorarium,” she added.
It can be remembered that last year President Marcos Jr. vetoed, House Bill 9652 and Senate Bill 2520 entitled An Act Exemption from Income Taxation the Honoraria, Allowances, and Other Financial Benefits of persons Rendering Service during an Election Period.
This is because the measure runs counter the objective of the government’s comprehensive tax reform program to correct the inequity of the country’s tax system and negate the progressivity of the reforms introduced under RA 10963 or TRAIN Law.
“There is a stark disparity with the fact that while big corporations got tax cuts thru numerous laws approved by Malacanang, impoverished teachers are made to pay more taxes. This disappointed many of our teachers because it slashed at least P2200 from their take home electoral service honorarium which is quite a substantial amount now due to the country’s runaway inflation,” she said.
“It is in this light that we hope that the Marcos administration realizes this and now supports the increase in the BEI’s honorarium to give teachers what is due them for their hard work,” Castro said.
