THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers criticized the Department of Education for its inaction on teachers’ overtime compensation for last school year after an official correspondence from the Department of Budget and Management revealed that DepEd has not yet submitted its position paper on the matter.

In a multi-agency and multi-stakeholder dialogue held on October 26, 2021, the DBM and the Civil Service Commission requested for ACT and DepEd’s respective position paper on the subject before they issue their recommendations.

ACT submitted its position paper on November 10, 2021.

“DepEd has yet again proven their blatant negligence and lack of integrity. They can’t even be bothered to write a proper position paper to argue their stance against paying teachers’ their overtime, even with official requests from other agencies. It seems even DepEd knows that their position has no legs, which could explain their failure to provide any argument and/or legal basis to support their claim that the excess workdays cannot be considered as overtime and teachers need not be remunerated for such,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary general, said.

The group found out about DepEd’s non-compliance with the request after it was furnished a copy of the DBM’s official email to DepEd on April 27, 2022.

In the letter, DBM noted: “To date, the DBM is yet to receive the official position and comments of the DepEd on said claims of the ACT-Philippines.”

ACT urged the DBM and the CSC to set a clear deadline and proceed regardless of DepEd’s response if such is not met.

“Instead of allowing DepEd to hostage teachers’ overtime compensation, we call on DBM and CSC to set a time limit for when we must start proceeding with further deliberations on the issue with whatever arguments and information we have. It would add to the grave injustices already suffered by teachers to further delay the resolution of this case. Our teachers have inarguably met the exigencies of service amidst the crises, we only ask that the services they rendered by properly remunerated,” Basilio said.

ACT called on the government to grant teachers‘ 25 percent overtime premium and 77 days of service credits for the last school year, which totaled in 297 work days.

The group continued to assert that the law only allows a maximum of 220 class days per school year, but teachers were ordered to render services from June 1, 2020 to July 10, 2021—or 77 excess days of work. DepEd initially recognized the said excess workdays, going so far as to claim there were 87 overtime days, but later backpedaled and claimed that there was no overtime at all.