“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

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Low pay of teachers

If push turns to shove, teachers throughout the country will be receiving P9,000 pay increase in their average monthly salary of P10,000 – at least on three equal tranches of P3,000 – from 2008 to 2010. This effectively brings them on the safe side of the beach from loan sharks. And teachers will have to lobby at the Batasan to get this pay hike on the bag. But why a mass action as a political statement by those teachers who support this proposed salary bill? Will they leave the classrooms for a while to get their voices heard in the hallowed halls of Congress? Well, let us see.

With poverty threshold known to afford only for basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter and transportation, no more money can be made available for either recreation or emergency purposes as when the teachers themselves or their children get sick. Apparently, Representatives Del de Guzman and Teofisto Guingona III of the House of Representatives provide heat for their planned mass action to register their serious demand for salary hike. And they seem to have been assured to be compensated from the LGUs, a medical allowance, and a Magna Carta bonus – among other things. This congressional action is tantamount to ‘class legislation’ if it would only benefit teachers, and other government employees are otherwise placed in isolation. Let come what will.

Come to think of it, teachers’ lot has not quite improved over time. Some of them are seen selling all sort of stuff in the premises of the school. Still some of them probably go into another job after their teaching schedule if only to “make both ends meet” in an economic environment characterized by high prices. The so-called purchasing power of the peso is not one that brings teachers to a ‘comfort zone’. The whole scenario for teachers is far from ideal. They have more students than the ideal size of 40 per class – some of them from 70 to 120 students for one class alone. That means more test papers to check, more students to evaluate for recitation, class activity, and quizzes, seatwork, project and assignments. So are they not overworked than any other government employee? They sure are.

Social justice dictates that those who worked in government should be properly compensated with just renumeration in exchange of their services. If this fails, the teachers fail, too. And when teachers fail, so do the students – so do the parents. We all fail in the final analysis. That is why, until the teachers do really get their just compensation package, we should not expect too much of what they can deliver in terms of quality education, innovative methods in teaching, and levels of research and expertise in their subject specialties. Faculty development will not be best served under a low scheme of pay and allowances. Truly, teachers must be paid well, very well. Why not?

Perhaps, pulling the teachers up just above the poverty threshold so no one drowns in abject poverty is really a good subject matter of legislative action. This way, the best of the crop of future teachers will be recruited. This way, we can keep the good teachers to avoid the flight of human capital, so to speak. Truth is, there are already a significant number of Filipino teachers who opted to get themselves employed overseas because of a better pay scale. Soon come a time when only the lesser breed of teachers stay in the country because the government can ill afford to give them so much pay. If this happens, government would have failed in the education sector. What is the use of more classrooms when teachers have to become less and less?

This is Catch 22. Both Senate and House of Representatives ought now to legislate or enact a law that will give teachers a decent pay comparable to those in the private sector as well as would compare well with the pay of teachers in other countries. Let us get them well paid so that they will not become cheap apparatus for cheating during elections as they constitute the COMELEC’s Board of Canvassers. Let us get them paid well so they don’t have to succumb to loan sharks where if they do, all the more are they driven to a financial sinkhole they always will try to get away from but can’t. The school, sacred that it must be, should be free from loan sharks. At any period in our history, we cannot afford to lose teachers who are the crème of the crop simply because they hate low pay and would opt to find better pay somewhere.

Teachers, as the dedicated professionals, will not thrive under a low pay scheme perpetuated by their State. While many of them love teaching despite the low salaries, to advance in their skills or to go into higher studies at their own expense are real concerns that any well-meaning Department of Education should address. What is the good Secretary doing to alleviate the plight of our teachers than mess up with the curriculum that has placed us on equal footing with the rest of the world? An education department that cannot learn when to suspend classes during inclement weather really leaves much to be desired.

Viewed differently, the plight of our teachers is not one in isolation. Truth is, even American teachers suffer from low pay themselves as a national survey by the National Education Association would indicate. We do find in this survey that teachers in fact have to shell out from their own money certain other requirements to keep their work going. Imagine having to purchase supplies, books, and materials for your students? Imagine long hours and low pay? Imagine teachers having to hone their skills, to keep abreast with advances in technology, to enroll in other related courses to make themselves prepared before their students? This, as the survey findings capture, reflects the Status of the American Public School Teacher. At least in America, it remains the case that the best educated and the best experienced teacher teach in public schools – no matter the cost on their part where some of them are said to spend as much as $400 slashed from their own pay.

We are far compared to the American setting where on the average, teachers have 15 years of teaching experience, where teachers (most of them anyway) have master’s degrees. They make for good mentoring for new teachers who would soon replace them, don’t they? But how can such a situation evolve if our public schools always have a quick turnover of teachers – no more old teachers seen to stay in the public education sector? Who would then bridge the “experience gap” through good mentoring? Truly, the skills of the old and veteran teachers ought to be passed on to the new and such a low scheme of pay hardly allows for this scenario to take shape.

The good secretary of the Department of Education should not be an armchair technician, more than that. Let us please attend to our public school teachers. Let us free them from the fiscal bind. Let us study how to renumerate them for their instructional duties, their non-compensated but school-related activities. Let us harness long time commitment to teaching as a job by setting the stage conducive for this purpose. Let us not allow a situation where good teachers leave teaching because of the low pay they get. Help them now!

(Email: nielsky_2003@yahoo.com or text/call: 09164985265)

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P.S. to HB 5043 – reproductive health bill?

It challenges reflection that a lawyer, instead of a doctor, is the chief architect and single strong advocate of House Bill 5043 which actually consolidated into one, House Bills 17, 812, 2753 and 3920 in this 14^th Congress. The simple idea of gender equality easily permits room for women proponents themselves, in either House or Senate, to be the mouthpiece as well as the voice behind such a now controversial bill that is met with so much opposition from not few traditional groups – not Rep. Edcel Lagman – unless otherwise no other proponent from the female species is available. Women issues are the exclusive domain of women, or so I thought?

Offhand, HB 5043 pretentiously placed reproductive health, responsible parenthood, and population development under its policy framework. Good. But, let us be reminded that a single legislative measure such as HB 5043 that carries more than three subject matters is actually violative of “overloading”. Bottomline, that is the way professors of law teaching on “How a Bill becomes a Law” always teach us. Where will HB 5043 all transport us to? Such a would-be law that prohibits and in fact penalizes any health care service provider who refuses to perform medically-safe reproductive health care services in the absence of spousal consent or authorization is revolting. What is this?

Boldly, the bill claims the policy is anchored on the rationale of sustainable development with a manageable population of healthy, educated and productive citizens. Truly, this carries some kind of racist bias against those otherwise unhealthy, uneducated, and unproductive in our realpolitik. Is this Hitler’s idea of a “super race”? What about China with approximately two billion population that has managed equitably well without compromising its position as the next economic superpower? I say as anecdotal the sweet claim of a population management stratagem of a two-child policy. The proponent himself has more than two of his own, doesn’t he?

If we have higher population than any developing country in the world, it is a blessing especially so that all developing countries, no exception, are now suffering from a graying population and are now in search of manpower to replace their aging manpower base. Where then do they have to import human capital? Where will they recruit the Industrial Reserve Army but from the Philippines? Have we as much as forget that OFW remittances of our fellow Filipinos buoys up an otherwise fledging economy? The next generation of overseas workers to fill the great demand of manpower from the global market has to be born now – beyond the two-child limit. This kind of thinking might run counter to the bill’s claim that manpower is the principal asset of every country.

If there will be a universal access to quality reproductive health care services, methods, devices, supplies and relevant information, this means that a whole range of options is at anybody’s disposal. Studies have already validated that reproductive health care as practiced in the more developed societies already negative impacted upon the home, family life, career, social milieu, culture, and society as a whole. It has been shown that women committed suicides. It has been shown that the incidence of broken families rose. It has been shown that children from broken homes are what triggered dramatic rise in the crime statistical chart. As divorces multiply, broken homes multiply just as well. Medically, a lot of these so-called contraceptive pills are not safe and just how many pills are manufactured in a minute and at what cost?

Shotgun approach has been the design of HB 5043 – it will kill all birds that took flight – adults, adolescents, children – without distinction. It sounds crazy for the bill to claim that women seeking care from post-abortion complications shall be treated and consoled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner without being guilty of doing abortion in the unseen process. This kind of intended access opens the door wide to a lot of other possibilities in need of reproductive health care attention, not to be excluded, would be abortion itself at its initial stage. To give people the freedom to decide, if, when and how often to have a satisfying and safe sex life, as claimed, tears at the very moral fabric of our social existence.

What then constitute as reproductive health-related problems that the bill aims to prevent and avoid, reason for a full range of options? Openly enough, the bill espouses making available all methods and techniques to prevent unwanted, unplanned, and mistimed pregnancies but what exactly are these? Pregnancies – whether or not wanted, planned, or timed – are pregnancies. Any act or means to be sought to prevent it should be called as what? It would not be abortion, would it? Whoever invented these labels without any scientific basis ought to be a murderer?

It is noticeable how a proviso has been carried that would, in effect, expand the coverage of the National Health Insurance Program or NHIP especially to many poor and marginalized women to include a full range of reproductive health care services and supplies as health insurance benefits. Will money be inserted in another else’s pocket? How much in State subsidies will be infused into a supposed-to-be existing program or agency, again and again?

Rider or not to a proposed bill, the creation of a Board of Commissioners of POPCOM (or Population Commission) of 14 heads of agencies plus 3 representatives from the private sector ought to be the subject matter of another and separate bill yet to be proposed and filed in Congress considering that when a board meets, honoraria are given. At the very least, their appointment by the President for a term of 3 years means that some people get to be employed, first and second, time. Even the Department of Agriculture and the Commission on Higher Education will be members thereof make for Ripleys.

Again, more midwives or skilled attendants need to be employed in every municipality or city based on some ideal ratio. More qualified personnel in each city or province will have to be employed in hospitals to provide emergency obstetric care, again, based on ideal ratio of say one such hospital for every 500,000 population. How good indeed that indigent patients will be covered by PhilHealth insurance benefits for hospital services related to family planning? Again, are we putting money in another else’s pocket?

Another apparent caveat of the proposed HB 5043 is the fact that every congressional district will be provided a van for Mobile Health Care Service from their PDAF but it is not stated too clear if this means an additional budget to their PDAF. A mandatory health reproductive education will be required of those from Grade V to Fourth Year High School. Will parents agree to this law? Inserting 10% additional increase in the honoraria of barangay health workers is truly an inducement. Will not barangay captains or mayors agree to this scheme and its pecuniary benefits?

From where I stand, readers of HB 5043 can read with caution the corpus of purely statistical data in the explanatory note of the bill from which it based its goal to erect a law that is always met with extreme opposition from those thought to become its beneficiaries as well as to its intended victims. In the end, adults, adolescents, and children that the bill purports to help will be the true victims of a law that is easy enough to approve given that it has “strings attached” to it. Not remotely, some laws really self-destruct as soon as they get implemented and this proposed measure shall be one of them. Since coins will be dropped in the vendo machine, many legislators might tend to stamp their own approval of HB 5043, irrespective of dictates of conscience – and so be it.

(Email to: nielsky_2003@yahoo.com or text to: 09164985265)

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Congressional insertion, anyone?

To Congress is reposed the exclusive constitutional “power of the purse”. The bicameral legislature of both Senate and House of Representatives has the power to appropriate funds, a prerogative that is within its exclusive domain, or so it’s thought. And public knowledge indicates that every senator is allocated P200 million while that of every congressman is a P70 million slice of the entire budget pie. In other words, every year, each senator prepares a “grocery list” of all the projects, programs, and well, ‘patronage’ that he wants repaid back. So does the congressman in every legislative district or party-list that he represents. Taken together, the financial allocation for 24 senators and over 200 congressmen is graphically hemorrhagic. And paradoxically enough, our breed of politicians practically bleed government coffers dry through various such infrastructures that are grossly overpriced, substandard and in some cases, entirely non-existent projects.

To add insult to injury, some legislators have the uncharacteristic skill to insert what they need for their national or local constituency. Or why Ping cried wolf over an alleged insertion of P200 million of a C-5 road project – a rather redundant double-entry? The raging controversy has made everyone even more confused as camps of Ping and that of Villar exchange tirades as to who may have been responsible for this insertion, if it were. Concerned agencies of government like the DPWH itself and the DBM appear to have their own explanation on the apparent financial mess. And it seems that most have been inclined to believe that Ping is just sowing political intrigue that we even have to see Allan Cayetano on the rescue for Villar as well as Chiz Escudero, the two young gentlemen whom we thought were really anti-GMA. Comparatively enough, only Trillanes seems to be the true-blooded rebel of cause and note.

There ought to be something wrong with the entire budget process being conducted every year in Congress if it allows for a situation whereby any senator or congressman can in fact and in effect, insert something to the General Appropriations Act or GAA especially at the point prior to its final approval on a bicameral conference. These so-called congressional insertions are no longer the subject of plenary or committee deliberations in the budget process and therefore, no other member of either Senate or House of Representatives can question it – a departure from the House meeting as a whole. Nor, can Malacanang otherwise have proposed inclusion in the official proposed budget of such last-ditch or the 11^th hour congressional insertions. In other words, x number of congressional insertions are automatically appropriated free from the heat of a public debate held for the purpose.

There had been lot of budget secretaries appointed in the past administrations who may be said to be truly qualified and well-meaning. The likes of Secretary Diokno and Secretary Boncodin are now a rarity. They, at least, seem to be very conversant with every item in the national budget despite its voluminous thickness. They boast of a so-called “line budgeting process” or this so-called “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” – or, whatever happened to these techniques? It is not that easy to really screen the budget for some possible anomalous entries given the fact that there are limits to human endurance. Perhaps, the GAA should be one that can be inputted in the computer in a way that double-entries are easily detected by a few punches on the keyboard. The manner the national budget has been prepared may be a little bit already antiquated in that there is no way of quick and immediate review that can be done on the computer. In short, we still have failed to take advantage of the role of computer in preparing the national budget as to be fool-proof. We should give to the computer the work of reviewing the budget as quick as a “million instructions per second”.

In the meantime, we content ourselves with the way the annual national budget is being prepared, being deliberated upon, and being “inserted to”. Truth is, there should not be any occasion where entries other than those actually proposed by Malacanang and actually deliberated upon by either Senate or House, or both may be allowed. If this can happen, we can effectively stop Ping from crying wolf each time he sees very clear financial scam. Truly, the GAA can be tinkered with especially so if legislators become too lazy to really look at every budget entry meticulously. The whole ritual of passing the GAA simply follows the bandwagon effect, or the euphemistic “majority rule” with little care for caution.

What concerns us as taxpayers is really more on whether what has been appropriated is really the project that we can check tangibly. For instance, is the P1 million allocation for a farm-to-market road really based on the program of work approved by the DPWH (or DA for that matter) as may be audited by COA? And so on and so forth. Not few news coverages caught on TV show that there are still a lot of legislative districts in many provinces throughout the country that do not have even the basic amenities that they should already have by now. Does this mean that nothing in infrastructure projects were allocated by their congressmen? Does it mean that all the congressional budget have been purely budgeted as financial assistance to LGUs or other authorized entities such as maybe, foundations? Does it mean they were purely appropriated for drugs or medicines for the poor, scholarships perhaps or other programs of a similar nature?

All told, Ping just opened our eyes again to the possibility that dubious entries in the budget may be inserted that will serve no real public necessity. Studies have shown, based on comparative matrix that richer countries have lower levels of corruption and poorer countries have higher levels of corruption. RP is always part of this statistical chart ranking as it does as one of the most corrupt country in the world. So what else is new? It is easy enough to think that if corruption can only be mitigated if not totally eradicated, then we shall see a very progressive country this part of the globe. There are still a lot of holes to plug in a vicious corruption that has already become part of our national psyche, our culture, and our state of affairs. Can we really stop corruption, pray tell, that we shall see the day when every a million peso project appropriated really goes to where it should be spent, not pocketed?

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OFW earnings – an economic booster

Next to the exports of goods and services, overseas remittances are the largest foreign exchange sources for the Philippine economy. And empirical results as that undertaken by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas indicate that the beneficiaries are first, the middle-income classes from across all regions and second, the low-income classes, also from all regions, except that of the NCR where the high-income classes come only second.

Further studies as that of the Asian Development Bank indicate that this has become a strategy in most developing countries – exporting human capital in favor of migrant remittances – to address poverty reduction. Truth is, practically, 10% of Filipinos today of the 90 million population work overseas making RP the third largest migrant-sending country next to Mexico and India. Thus, such remittances clearly become source of capital and resources as it impacts on the development of millions of households in the country.

In 2003 alone, almost 8 million reside or work overseas. Again, some $7.6 billion are recorded to have flowed in through various formal channels in the Philippines but such amount is even believed to reflect only half of the money sent to the Philippines through various other unregulated channels.

Currently, the Central Bank forecasts that overseas worker remittances will hit record of $15.9 billion this year or up by 10% from 2007. It ought to be higher than these recorded figures on account of other channels or modes by which foreign earnings come into the country other those through commercial banks. Fact is, for July 2008 alone, it is said that migrant remittances rose double-digit to hit 24.6 percent. Thus, it cannot be gainsaid that, as a major source of foreign exchange, migrant remittances pay a significant contribution to the country’s gross national product.

RP has, matter-of-factly, filled the void for that great demand for sea-based workers accounting for almost 30$ of the world’s supply of seafarers. And of the total amount of annual migrant remittances, some 14% of which were from Filipino seafarers. And not too surprisingly, albeit sadly enough, these remittances have been mostly used for excessive consumption, both from the OFWs and from their household beneficiaries.

On the other hand, the soothing effect of migrant remittances, is said to have perpetuated a culture of dependence on remittances and this perceived moral hazard or dependency syndrome is seen to impede economic growth unless such amounts of money are better geared toward more productive economic endeavors. In other words, if otherwise not invested productively away from mere excessive consumption of the new-moneyed class, it cannot be transformed as a source of capital for development.

In the evolving configuration, it becomes clear that people from the provinces are fast emerging as the New Middle Class Society (“NMCS”, 2008) in the best Skinnerian tradition as 2/3 of OFWs hail from provinces outside of Metro Manila. Even the government is now being encouraged to open remittance windows for Philippine banks or remittance entities in host countries if only to generate more remittances through the formal sector. Beyond these concerns which are but self-serving on the part of government, it remains the case that Filipino workers are the demand in overseas markets. True enough, these remittances can be driver for economic development for the Philippines but then again, isn’t it uncharacteristic that the government itself suffers from this culture of dependency?

Viewed another way, I do believe that our overseas workers – as the main labor force of most developed countries in the world – only know too well on how to remit their hard-earned earnings to their families and households in the Philippines. Perhaps, it will be a better scheme for them to send their earnings through some backdoor approach other than formal channels since banks stand more to benefit in the process if it were through the formal sector.

Lastly, the government does not have to design a sort of a ‘strategic fiscal template’ in order to harness remittances for other purposes than that designed by the OFWs and their beneficiaries – excessive spending in consumer goods. That will be alright in any case since a lot of money circulate in our domestic markets. Still, ours is a free market economy and any form of imposed economic order is but taboo, call it that. Let not the hand of the State be seen getting cookies from the cookie jar. Leave the OFWs alone.

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Reproductive health bill

There appears to be three major points of view from which to approach the controversial reproductive health bill now pending with the House of Representatives for plenary deliberations, namely: legal, moral, and scientific. This is so since, the proposed legislative measure once enacted into law will affect society writ large. In short, there are many stakeholders by differing institutional concerns. It then becomes difficult to erect a tripod to hold the issue that has carried so much weight.

There are those who think, once legislated, HB 812 or the proposed Reproductive Health Care Act of 2008 will in fact set the stage for other anti-life laws or so-called D.E.A.T.H. bills (acronym for death, euthanasia, abortion, two-child policy, and homosexuality). The problem that has been viciously overlooked in our legislative mill is the fact that legislators themselves violate the rule that a bill should have only one subject matter. Truth is, HB 812 may have to be broken up into separate bills and for that matter into separate laws. An evolving culture of “aquarium legislation” is tantamount to a constitutional violation of the legislative process.

Up until today, there is a serious opposition to a reproductive health bill in whatever form or substance it comes simply because there are such groups or organizations that are against it. For instance, the CBCP is against it and for that matter other like-minded Catholic sub-groups. True enough, from the time it was first filed in the past Congresses, the bill already experienced a string of failures – to be passed into law – owing to provisions that are questionable legally, morally, and scientifically. It can be said that again, this proposed HB 812 may go through another rough sailing unless it can be railroaded in Congress and Senate.

One theory stands in defense of the bill which claims it is necessary in order to curb population growth which is now pegged at 86 million Filipinos as well as for the sake of limited resources such as rice. But the myth of this Malthusian fear has already been settled long ago and it does not anymore hold water. Why a ‘zero population growth’ as that which was a matter of policy in the whole of the United States and Europe? If we consider the earnings being remitted into our country from OFWs as the single factor that buoys up our fledging if pale economy, then we should have no reason to argue against this bill. That ‘zero population policy’ practiced by countries in the First Bloc now reached the irreversible scenario of a graying population that depletes their respective economies in heavy state subsidies. Is it then a boon or bane?

The National Academy of Science and Technology supports reproductive health bill. The Catholic Church or the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines does not. There are pro-life advocates versus pro-choice advocates. This camp says it involves no abortion, another camp says otherwise. This group claims contraceptives to be abortifacient, another such group claims it is not so. Within the legal community, a wedge divides their sentiments as to whether it is against the Divine Law to allow any room of choice toward abortion or to some extent euthanasia. Cases of abortion do sometimes involve “life-boat ethics” – that Catch 22 of having to choose which person to save – the unborn babe or the mother. There are issues at every loop, claims at every turn, and cries in every direction the bill takes – for or against.

Moralists, legalists, scientists follow their own lines of thinking that are parallel unto one another – no lines intersect. There is where the problem lies. Is it then possible to weave from various strands or threads a beautiful tapestry of the proposed bill? Has it become time to curb population growth or corruption? Incidentally, the Secretary of Health announced that an initial amount of P150 billion as start-up fund is intended for this project in terms of the “infrastructure” to get it going. Fact is, some P2 billion will be so allocated just for condoms or like medicines or drugs. Is this the reason that politicians as legislators incessantly lobby for the reproductive health bill to be legislated into law?

My good friend, lawyer Jo Imbong, legal counsel of CBCP really thinks it is unconstitutional in that it violates Article XVI, Section 9 as well as Article XIII, Section 14 of the Constitution. My former boss, Rep. Rene Velarde of Buhay Party-List is strongly against it in furtherance of the pro-life advocacy of the party which made it number 1 in the election chart overturning Bayan. Other well-meaning personages are against the idea of an abortion, first and foremost. Proponents of the bill however, argue that none of it is contemplated. But that can be mere lip service to sweet-talk us all to believe the proposed law will not violate any of the provisions of the Constitution in so far as the unborn, children, mothers, women, and marginalized are concerned. Nor can it be claimed that the reproductive health bill stands on solid ground when in fact, it stands on an ice floe that would soon melt at the heat of debate and crumble to the bottom.

At the end of the day, the proposed measure ought to be restudied very carefully beyond the prevailing points of view. A recent study of the UP School of Economics tended to have oversimplified it as one of a situation that placed the various stakeholders between a hard Church and a soft State. It went on to state that the RH bill is in fact pro-poor, pro-life, and pro-family. We sure have all different sense on the matter but honestly, I have only one misgiving in the provisions of the bill that would – by any number and extent – accommodate, in effect, post-abortion cases as part of the whole program. Thus, for the proponent to honestly claim there is no such abortion in cases where there would clearly be, crystal clear enough – is simply begging the question.