Teachers’ group opposes new taxes
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers go against the proposal to impose new taxes to enable the government to pay debts for its pandemic response.
ACT asked where the huge debts and donations went, when the Philippines ranked the lowest pandemic response in three of the five studies conducted by Bloomberg.
“Before we talk about paying off these debts, we first need to properly account where all these money went. As far as the education sector is concerned, we hardly received any support from this government as we were forced to shift to costlier modes of learning. We didn’t get any aid for the tech and infra requirements of distance learning; no sufficient funding was provided for the safe re-opening of schools; teachers who fell ill from Covid19 did not get any medical support from the government, hence forcing us to turn to an unaided health break; just to name a few,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary general, said.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said increasing value added tax and excise taxes will help the country’s debt-servicing programs.
ACT said that these proposed levies are “inhumane.”
“No to additional taxes on regular wage-earners, informal workers, and small to medium enterprises who are all reeling from the health and socio-economic crises. Instead of bleeding our people dry, the government should explore other means to raise the needed funds to pay off Duterte’s debts,” Basilio said.
