61,000 teachers to receive special hardship allowance

MANILA, Philippines — About 61,000 public school teachers are expected to receive additional allowance for being exposed to hardships or difficulties in their places of work, the Department of Education (DepEd) said.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones recently issued a directive allowing its regional offices to start processing and computing the special hardship allowance (SHA) that will be released to qualified teachers.

Hardship posts include schools with transport inaccessibility, as well as those in difficult situations such as exposure to calamities and armed conflict.

DepEd said P2.152 billion will be allocated this year for the SHA, which is estimated to benefit 61,000 public school teachers nationwide.

Briones explained the computation for this year’s hardship allowance will be based on the guidelines covered by a budget circular released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in 2007.

She earlier said the DepEd is working with the DBM to review and update the guidelines to be more responsive to the current needs of teachers assigned in hardship posts.

The allowance of teachers assigned in hardship posts is computed based on the distance from the nearest point of available transport, which corresponds to a certain percentage of their basic salary.

The computation of the allowance for multi-grade, mobile and alternative learning system coordinators is based on the number of classes or learning levels that the teachers handle.

The DepEd has yet to release the specific timeline for the release of the SHA.