Health workers from the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Philippine Heart Center and Lung Center of the Philippines on Friday criticized the Duterte administration for the “libing wage” increase.
The workers also called down the Department of Health for being unprepared over the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
In a statement, Edwin Pacheco, NKTIEA-AHW president, said: “We are very much disappointed with the “barya-baryang salary increase” among us health workers and other government employees. “Duterte government has one-sidedly doubled the basic pay of uniformed personnel to about P30,000 monthly, while the entry salary level of a civilian employee under Salary Grade 1 only gets P483 monthly increase or P16.00 per day raising the salary of P11,068 to P11,551. It is very clear that this government does not give importance to civilian employees especially those in the lowest ranks from SG 1-10.
“This move only served to distort further the already skewed salary scheme in government, leaving the great majority of civilian employees struggling to live or meet the cost of living while top officials bask on scandalous pay levels, like the President himself who gets more than P400, 000 per month.”
The SSL of 2019 under Republic Act 11466 “is grossly deceptive, divisive and unjust salary hike against the rank and file employees and favors those in the upper salary grade scale,” said Pacheco.
This is only a continuation of the past SSL under the past administrations that do not honor the contribution of health workers and other employees especially those under salary grades 1-10, Pacheco added.
“A double blow to our already libing wage is the implementation of the Tax Reform Acceleration Inclusion (TRAIN LAW 3) that raises a cumulative price of P10 for gasoline which is raising the prices of basic commodities and utilities. We are already poor but TRAIN LAW is making us even poorer,” Pacheco lamented.
Moreover, health workers urged the Duterte administration to ensure the safety of the frontline health workers by providing with adequate and appropriate personal protective equipment and facilities, he said.
Health workers save lives, prone to infectious diseases they deserve salaries that would give them humane living conditions to be more productive in their respective works, he also said.
“We also demand to increase health budget by 5% of the Gross Domestic Product as WHO recommended. We are calling the Duterte administration to re-channel the Presidential Intelligence funds as augmentation to equip our public hospitals to properly handle cases of emerging epidemics like Novel Coronavirus,” said Pacheco.
“We will continue to make our voices heard by our government for the immediate increase of minimum wage nationwide to P16,000 monthly for public employees and P750 per day for our private health workers,” he said.