During the campaign period, now President Rodrigo Duterte promised cops and soldiers that he would give them a huge salary increase – at least double their current salary to ensure that they will do their jobs properly and would, ideally, be less prone to accepting bribes from criminals.
While the pay hike wasn’t implemented in 2016 due to budget constraints, it seems that 2017 will be the year that the country’s uniformed personnel will finally see part of this increase in their pockets.
Today, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno announced that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has submitted the proposal to provide better compensation for the country’s uniformed personnel.
This proposed pay hike not only covers the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) but also other uniformed personnel. This pay hike will be on top of the second tranche of the Salary Standardization (Executive Order No. 201, s. 2016) which only increased the monthly provisional allowance of uniformed personnel, not their basic pay.
But while the increase in monthly provisional allowance will take effect starting January 2017, the higher pay hike promised by Duterte still requires the concurrence of Congress and the Senate. Still, Diokno feels positive that the proposal will be approved because “it’s a popular move”.
The DBM did not detail the actual salary increases but noted that the lowest ranking soldier (Private) will receive a 27.2% salary increase compared with last year’s salary. This means that a soldier’s minimum salary will be at least Php36,344.83.
Meanwhile, cops and other uniformed personnel will receive at least P39,468.75 (for Police Officer I) – the increase is 33.3% more than their income last year.
Diokno also believes that the government will be able to double the salaries of cops and soldiers by January 2018, as promised by Duterte.
The good news about the pay hike comes in the heels of the actual release of the rice allowance for cops and soldiers which had been approved back in October 2016.
See: Soldiers and Cops to Finally Get Rice Allowance Starting January 2017, Subsidy to be Given in Cash
