Senator Franklin Drilon, outgoing Senate president, expected some things from the first State of the Nation Address or SONA of President Duterte this Monday, July 25, 2016. These include updates on Duterte’s campaign promise of raising the minimum salary of policemen to an ambitious P50,000 a month.
In particular, Drilon said he expected to hear from the president what kind of help he wanted from Congress for his 10-point socio-economic agenda.
“In his 10-point socioeconomic agenda are measures to improve his social protection programs, which include the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4PS) or the Conditional Cash Transfer. We’d like to hear how he intends to improve this particular social protection program,” Drilon said in a Senate forum.
About the P50,000 police minimum pay campaign promise, Drilon said, “The policemen are looking forward to this increase given the role of fulfilling President Duterte’s anti-criminality campaign. We’d like to hear how the President intends to fund this minimum salary for our policemen of P50,000.”
Earlier, Secretary Benjamin Diokno of the budget department had already explained that the said minimum pay increase for cops was not yet included in the P3.35 trillion national budget proposed for 2017. However, he noted that pay increases for law enforcers have already been included in the second part of the Salary Standardization Law (SSL).
Drilon, however, rebutted that the salary increase provision under the SSL must still be funded by the General Appropriations Act or GAA for 2017.
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Drilon explained further, “Firstly, the executive order signed by President (Benigno) Aquino before he left provides for salary increases for over three or four years, which however, must be funded by the General Appropriations Act. For example, the increases for 2017, which was indicated in that executive order signed by President Aquino before he left, should be reflected in the General Appropriations Act for 2017.”
Drilon admitted that he had no idea what the situation was because he hadn’t seen the 2017 budget yet. Specifically, he wasn’t sure if the said salary increases provided for in the executive order will indeed be funded in the budget for 2017 to be submitted by Duterte to Congress. “So I don’t know, I’m in the dark as to what the situation is,” he said.
The bad news is, if there is no funding for the pay hikes, then there will be no pay increases, said Drilon.
If in case the pay increases are funded, Drilon said he wanted, “to know how much it is because President Duterte has indicated that he would want a minimum of P50,000 per month for the PO1, the lowest rate. So I’d like to see how this will be funded in the budget.”
The senator further clarified: “Remember, it was just an executive order. Since there was a promise of P50,0000, that executive order must be amended and the funds necessary to fund that new increase or the old increase must be in the budget to make it effective.”
In short, the executive order was not enough. It won’t automatically enable the bureaucracy to get the pay hike. “There must be an item in the 2017 General Appropriations Act,” Drilon added.
However, Drilon said he was apt to support the pay hike for cops but repeated that such must be assured in the budget.
Aside from the above issues, Drilon also wanted to know from Duterte’s SONA what kind of powers exactly he wanted from Congress to remedy the traffic problem in the country. Another issue he expected tackled in the SONA was Duterte’s stand on the Anti-Political Dynasty Act being proposed. Before he took office, Duterte considered asking for emergency powers from Congress to help solve the traffic problem in Metro Manila.
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