President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. emphasized on Tuesday the importance of increasing the Service Recognition Incentive (SRI) for public school teachers, describing them as a “special category.”

“Teachers are [a] special category. So we have to handle that individually,” President Marcos told reporters when asked to comment on teachers’ SRI.

President Marcos ordered the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Department of Education (DepEd) to explore budgetary measures to ensure a raise in the SRI for teachers.

The government is targeting an SRI increase to approximately 1,011,800 DepEd personnel from PhP18,000 to PhP20,000. |PND