MANILA — An organization of education workers is asking the Department of Education (DepEd) to give service credits and overtime pay to public school teachers for making them work longer than usual in the past months.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said teachers should be given service credits and a 25-percent overtime pay because the adjusted school calendar required them to render 77 more working days than the mandated 220 days in a school year.

"Extended na nga ang school year, abonado na nga sa distance learning, hindi man lang ba bibigyan ng karampatang kompensasyon ang mga guro sa walang-tigil nilang serbisyo?" ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio said in a statement on Tuesday.

(The school year has been extended, teachers have been shouldering the costs of distance learning, are we not going to give them just compensation for their uninterrupted services?)

"It is not only inhumane to oblige our teachers to extend work for another three months without proper compensation, but the heavy amount of work demanded of them during these times is grossly abusive," he said.

School Year 2020 to 2021 started last Oct. 5, 2020 and was originally scheduled to end on June 11, 2021, but the DepEd recently moved the last day of classes to July 10, 2021.

• DepEd moves last day of classes to July 10

Public school teachers have been reporting for work since June 1, 2020.

Basilio also noted that the current school calendar deprives teachers of their proportional vacation pay (PVP), the only leave benefit given to public school educators.

PVP is a leave benefit granted to public school teachers as a counterpart to the mandated sick and vacation leaves for workers in the public and private sector, ACT explained. It used to be given during summer breaks after teachers rendered 10 months of continuous service in a school year.

• Exhausted teachers remain on the frontlines as pandemic drags on

ABS-CBN News has reached out to DepEd for a comment but it has yet to respond as of writing.

RELATED VIDEO:

Watch more in iWantv or TFC.tv