ACT TEACHERS Partylist Rep. France Castro on Saturday demanded an overtime pay for teachers, saying distance learning requires them to stretch workloads done outside the working hours, even on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

Castro was alarmed by numerous reports her office has been receiving about teachers getting burned out and physically ill, and are in extreme exhaustion due to heavier workloads and longer hours under the distant learning scheme.

“We demand an overtime pay for any work done beyond the legally allotted 8-hours/day, 5-days/week. Any work done beyond these hours and beyond the job description of teachers should be adequately compensated,” stressed the lawmaker.

The lady solon pointed out teachers are now handling twice as much students than what they have in the previous school years since aside from the normal 50-60 student capacity for every subject for every grade level, they also need to create a group chats with the parents of their students on how to guide and hold weekly feedback sessions with them.

Castro added teachers are the frontliners of the education sector, which is why during this pandemic, they endure all the responsibility of the shift to remote learning.

This includes writing, editing, printing, and delivery of self-learning modules, learning about the most essential learning competencies, managing and employing blended distant learning modalities, attending multiple daily webinars, and learning action cells sessions, clerical and administrative orders from school heads which are a way impossible to be done in a normal working eight-hour per day.

“More so, the Department of Education should implement measures on how to protect teachers’ welfare. It is now high time for the Duterte administration, if he truly cares for the welfare and rights of the educators, to address the clamor of the toiling teachers,” Castro ended.