ACT demands overtime pay for poll workers

MANILA, Philippines — A teachers’ group is calling for overtime pay for poll workers as election services were extended in many parts of the country due to defective vote counting machines (VCMs).

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said that even if voting hours were not officially extended, poll workers still had to render longer service due to glitches with the VCMs.

ACT secretary general Raymond Basilio said many precincts saw VCMs bog down, forcing poll workers to either wait for replacements or batch-feed ballots after the voting hours.

“It will be truly abusive if they will not be given added compensation for the longer hours of service,” Basilio said in a statement in Filipino.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) earlier denied proposals for a two-shift system for teachers or giving overtime pay, citing limitations on the budget.

ACT noted that even up to yesterday morning, some teachers were still awaiting replacements for faulty SD cards or were still feeding ballots into the VCMs.

Basilio said that poll workers, a majority of whom are public school teachers, have been bearing the brunt of Comelec’s failures.

He said it was a slap in the face of the teachers serving in the Board of Election Inspectors when the Comelec declared the election a success when some teachers have not yet been able to go home.

ACT said it has been receiving reports and complaints from teachers, about 64 percent of which had to do with machine errors and irregularities.

This has led to long queues in many precincts and even longer hours for teacher-poll workers, who have been performing poll duties even before the school gates opened at 6 a.m. on election day.