ACT TEACHERS Party-list Representative France Castro sought higher election service honorarium for teachers and members of the Board of Election Inspectors who will serve in the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections in October.

“Members of the BEI should have higher net take home honorarium for their election service and I proposed to the Commission on Elections that P10,000 net honorarium should be given to the chairperson and P9,000 for the members,” Castro said.

“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.

The lawmaker recalled that last year President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. vetoed House Bill 9652 and Senate Bill 2520 — which exempts the honoraria of those who rendered election services from income tax — saying that the measure counters the objective of the government’s comprehensive tax reform program to correct the inequity of the tax system and negate the progress of the reforms introduced under RA 10963 or TRAIN Law.

Castro lamented that “big corporations got tax cuts thru numerous laws approved by Malacañang but 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 realize this and now support the increase in the BEI’s honorarium to give teachers what is due them for their hard work,” Castro said.