THE DEPARTMENT of Education on Monday explained the delay in the processing and payment of employees’ service recognition incentive.

“For all DepEd family members inquiring about Service Recognition Incentive, I already explained in my previous update that there are a lot of conditionalities that DepEd has to comply with before the processing, release and payment of the same is made to its employees,” Education Undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla said.

She said that these were indicated in the Administrative Order for SRI.

“I reiterate the following for a better understanding of what we have been doing and to ensure that we are not stopping from finding ways to make this SRI be a reality for all of us,” she added.

Sevilla said savings in personal services and other maintenance and other operating expenses need to be pooled and submitted to the Department of Budget and Management. Since funds will come from schools, divisions, regions and the central office, it will take time to consolidate all items.

“Modification of MOOE to personal services so it can become a source for SRI has to be evaluated and approved by DBM. Amount of SRI should be uniform or same in rate for all DepEd employees,” she said.

“SRI can still happen, and it can be paid to all employees but we need to do the right process and determine the total available pooled amount so we can also compute how much is the possible uniform rate we can give to employees. Admin and finance units from all levels of governance of the DepEd are doing their best to pass all conditionalities and process them as soon as possible so it can reach you,” the DepEd official added.