Gordon wants tax on text to hike teachers’ pay to P40k

by Edson C. Tandoc Jr. (Philippine Daily Inquirer)

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100214-253072/Gordon-wants-tax-on-text-to-hike-teachers-pay-to-P40k

MANILA, Philippines--If he becomes the next President, Sen. Richard Gordon plans to raise the cost of mobile phone text messaging to P1.50 per message, an admittedly unpopular stand considering how Filipinos are addicted to texting.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to vote for me. But I don’t want to grow old and say that I never tried,” he said.

Told that he could be perceived as arrogant, Gordon said he was just answering questions “with conviction.”

“Forgive me if I give the wrong impression, but I’ve won all my political positions being like this,” said the 64-year-old senator who shot to national prominence as the energetic and youthful mayor of Olongapo City and the first chair of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. He said he would use the projected P365 billion a year to be generated from the 50-centavo tax per text to raise the monthly salary of public school teachers to P40,000 as well as provide grade-school students with electronic book readers.

He said a teacher in Singapore earns more than P120,000 a month compared to an average P14,000 for a Filipino teacher.

Noting that the government spends P4,000 per student per year on textbooks that are often marred with errors, he said he can equip every Filipino elementary school student with a $100 Kindle, a wireless electronic reading device that can be stocked with electronic versions of books and other printed material.

A bill proposing to impose a five-centavo excise tax on every text, picture, video and audio clip sent through mobile phones to generate between P20 billion and P36 billion a year was met with stiff opposition in Congress last year.

But this has not deterred Gordon, the candidate for president of his own Bagumbayan Party, with former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chair Bayani Fernando as his running mate.

Gordon, who counts on the many people he has helped as chair of the Philippine National Red Cross to support his candidacy, admits to being frank and straightforward.

“I like people to be assertive and ambitious, but they have to work hard,” he said.

Not a tax

Gordon stressed the importance of improving the country’s education system during a meeting with Inquirer editors and correspondents on Wednesday night.

He reiterated his tax-on-text proposal on Friday before an audience of 300 college students at St. Paul University in Manila.

“It is not a tax but our contribution to education and health,” he said.

He stressed the need to focus on education, considering that out of every 100 children who enter Grade 1, only 17 will go on to finish college.

While he said he could eliminate corruption by his fourth year in office, charging a 50-centavo tax on each of the almost 3 billion text messages sent by Filipinos each day would immediately provide the funds for his educational programs.

And if users were to cut down on text messaging as a result, a 50-centavo tax on 2 billion text messages would still give the government P1 billion every day, or P365 billion a year.

He said the funds would go directly to what he called a HEAP, or Health and Education Acceleration Program, which could be monitored by the top officials of the country’s big universities to prevent misuse.

As if to gauge the public reaction to his proposal, Gordon asked the students if they approved of his program to raise teachers’ salaries and buy every Filipino public school pupil a Kindle.

The answer was an overwhelming “yes.”