Student assistants air dismay over incessant salary delays
by John Paul Cristobal
With the usual month-overdue delay in the salary of the student assistants (SA) of the university, calls for an expedited disbursement process intensify. With SAs receiving their salary for November last Jan. 23 and their December salary being processed in the Accounting Office (AO) just this Jan. 25, students who mainly rely on this income are certainly in a disadvantaged position now.
While SAs recognize the program’s benefits for their personal and professional growth, they are left with no choice but to wait for their salary to be stuck under the extreme bureaucratic processes of the university.
The process
In The Manila Collegian’s interview, an Office of Student Affairs (OSA) OSA staff detailed the procedures and deadlines they strictly follow in processing the SAs’ salary. Currently, the OSA has 62 active SAs.
According to this staff, the SAs should submit their monthly Daily Time Record (DTR) and Work Accomplishment Report (WAR) every fifth day of the month. Extensions may be given until the 10th day to give SAs ample time, especially when weekends and holidays meet with the submission deadline.
If the staff has received at least 10 DTRs and WARs already, they will proceed to compute and verify the time rendered by the SA for the service and prepare a copy of the approved appointment papers. If an erroneous entry is spotted, the staff returns the requirements to the SA.
This usually takes two working days before the required documents are sent to the Information Management System (IMS) Office through the University Information System (UIS).
The UIS has three online systems: the Student Assistant and Graduate Assistant Information System (SAGA IS), the Service Information and Ticketing System (SITS), and the Financial Management Information System (FMIS). The OSA requires two to three working days to process SAs’ personal data, bank accounts, and appointment dates and to request payroll through these systems. However, the allotted time becomes extended when glitches occur.
After these procedures are completed, the OSA submits the requirements to the AO for pre-auditing the transactions for three days.
After pre-auditing, AO submits the requirements to the Budget Office (BO). The BO processes the documents for up to three days and returns these to AO.
Then, AO forwards the transaction to the Office of the Chancellor for Administration and Finance (OVCAF) to finalize the procedure before sending the requirement to the Cash Office. According to OVCAF’s Citizen’s Charter, another three working days are needed to finish this until the SAs’ salaries are settled in their bank accounts.
The repercussions
Given the long-winded system of releasing their salary, SAs underlined the irony of being assisted financially but burdened by bureaucracy at the same time.
“Nasusuportahan naman ako dahil may dumadating pa rin namang sahod, pero minsan talaga sobrang pahirapan na nangangapa kami kung kailan darating ito,” said an SA who refused to be named.
Last semester, the student joined the SA program to finance her rent expenses as she had just moved in at the UP Manila Dormitory. However, because of her salary delays, she could not pay her dues on time, resulting in a penalty charge.
“Dahil sa delay na halos abutin ng buwan bago namin makuha, inaabutan ako ng due date ng pagbabayad sa dorm na nagreresulta sa pagdadagdag ng surcharge sa bayarin ko. Mas lumalaki tuloy yung bayarin, at wala na talagang natitira sa sinasahod ko,” they added.
Notably, SAs’ one-hour compensation is equivalent to Php 60, which is not enough for them.
The cause
OSA explained in the interview that processing their November salary lasted for more than a month because of the forced break of the employees from Dec. 22 to Jan. 1.
The deadline for submitting the DRTs and WARs was also imposed on Dec. 11 instead of Dec. 5 to give leniency to students occupied by academic workload before the Christmas break.
According to the transaction history made available by the AO and BO to The Manila Collegian, the AO received the completed documents from the OSA on Dec. 14. They processed the documents and submitted them to the BO after the forced break on Jan. 5.
The Budget Office worked from Jan. 5 to Jan. 8 for the budget clearance and returned the documents to the AO. Subsequently, AO received the transaction on Jan. 10, the same day they did the pre-audit. It stayed in the AO for four working days until signed on Jan. 17 and forwarded to the OVCAF on Jan. 18.
The OVCAF received the transaction on Jan. 22 and worked on the documents for two working days until their salary was settled on Jan. 23.
Meanwhile, the December salary submitted the requirements to the AO on Jan. 12, two working days after the SAs submitted their DTRs and WARs. The IMS took two working days to collect and process the SAs’ data.
OSA submitted the requirements on January 17. AO received the documents on January 18 and did pre-auditing for three working days before sending this to the BO. The documents then underwent the process at the BO for three working days and were returned to the AO on Jan. 25.
The culprit
Notably, the University changed its system last August 2023 to process the salaries of SAs. From manually creating the payroll to injecting all the necessary data into the said online systems, OSA believes this is one of the factors that lengthen the process.
An additional modification to the process requires the signatories’ wet signature, which was not done before. The OSA targets to give the SA salary two weeks after the DTRs and WARs are submitted. Still, given these overwhelming procedures and changes in the system, the goal becomes impracticable.
Mainly, in this extremely bureaucratic process, there lies the limited manpower given the overloaded working conditions. Currently, OSA only has one staff assigned to all SA-related responsibilities and one staff member in AO who continues the task.
This lack of administrative-level workforce that continues to affect, limit, and delay students’ basic services necessitates amplifying students’ campaigns against current anti-student systems in place.
