President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s New Year message

We started 2006 with a pay hike for government workers and we will end it with a vow to do it again next year.As soon as Congress comes back from its holiday furlough, I will be sending up a bill that will seek to grant an average 10-percent increase in the base pay of government employees effective July 2007.

This bill governs the usage of the P10.3 billion which we have set aside as the first installment of a merit-based, performance-driven compensation reform package for public sector workers.

I am asking Congress to cap its impressive run of legislation with the passage of this important bill. And come July, when the next legislature convenes, I will stand before our legislators to plead for the speedy passage of the third edition of the Salary Standardization Law, one that will not only increase the pay of state workers but boost the productivity of government as well.

The Secretary of Budget and Management will submit these bills to Congress, which will include our uniformed men and women in these pay increases.

These measures distill inputs from the field, best managerial practices, performance benchmarks and projected revenue streams of the government, all with the interest of the public in mind. When we embarked on our mission to put our fiscal house in order, we asked government workers to share the burden of the people.

Now that we have turned the corner, it is time for their share of the social payback of economic reforms.