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By Jaileen F. Jimeno
, Philippine Center For Investigative Journalism
(Editor’s note: The first part
reported about the problems of providing universal primary
education, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. Part 2
cited the experience of Las Piñas City. Despite its awards and
recognitions, the city faces serious challenges in education because
of insufficient resources.)
Last of three parts
LAWYER Frances Cynthia
Guiani-Sayadi talks to distraught “dead” teachers all the time,
but she makes it a point to crack jokes when they call her on her
cell phone at night.
“I appeal to them, please
don’t call me at night,” she said. “I’m afraid of you.
You’re already dead.”
Guiani-Sayadi is solicitor
general of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
She has been given the horrendous task of putting order to the
chaotic records of teaching personnel in the ARMM.
Perhaps macabre humor helps
lighten the stress, since part of her assignment is talking to
teachers who have been reported and certified dead, and for whom
burial and insurance money had been collected.
So far the graveyard has yielded
no corpses ¯ at least not those of the teachers ¯ but further
investigations have unearthed tons of forged paperwork at all levels
of the bureaucracy that are blamed on what some call “golden
hands.”
A shortage in teachers has been
cited as one of the reasons why the country’s education indicators
have plummeted and why the Philippines is unlikely to meet the
Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015.
The lack of teachers, in turn, is due in part to the fact that only
a fraction of the estimated half a million who enroll in education
courses each year eventually graduate and pass the licensure
examinations. In 2007, only 28 percent of over 124,000 who took the
licensure exam passed.
For the past two decades,
teachers have also been leaving the country in droves to work
overseas ¯ sometimes even as nannies.
Teacher jobs for sale
In ARMM, which comprises eight
provinces down south, the shortage in educators has been exacerbated
by what many there say have been decades of corruption, abuse, and
inefficiency within the Department of Education and the region’s
officialdom. Indeed, it is probably difficult to find takers there
for a profession that not only entails long hours, but has also
become known for delayed salaries and benefits that go missing.
The department’s Basic
Education Information System data show that from 2003 to 2005, ARMM
was home to 548,766 elementary school pupils and 13,701 locally
hired teachers. The teacher-student ratio in the region was at the
time estimated at 1:42. Excluding ARMM, the teacher-student ratio
for the whole of Mindanao was 1:37.
But teaching has become a tainted
profession in ARMM. National and local officials also said that some
of the very people who are supposed to teach children moral values
along with the ABCs have bribed their way into teaching posts and
then “subcontract” their jobs.
To be fair, bribes in exchange
for teaching positions is nothing new to the Education department.
Former Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz admitted that the
practice of education officials demanding from a prospective teacher
his or her salary for the first two months on the job is not unheard
of. What is news to him is the idea of a teacher hiring
someone else to handle a class.
“I’ve never seen that at the
national level,” Luz said.
Many legitimate educators in ARMM
said several practices of their pseudo colleagues are unique to the
region. They also say they have been complaining for years for local
and national leaders to look into their plight.
Some have even called on ARMM
Governor Zaldy Uy Ampatuan to resign if he fails to act on their
problems. Last December, local officials finally urged President
Gloria Arroyo to help them look into the teachers’ complaints.
Critical concerns
Among those confirmed as critical
concerns by initial investigation is a fund mess at Education
department office in ARMM: unremitted teacher contributions and loan
payments to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).
In fact, the GSIS refused to
process loans and benefits to ARMM teachers from 1997 to 2003, after
failing to receive contributions from the region. Since 2004, the
Department of Budget and Management has resorted to withholding GSIS
contributions and directly remitting it to the agency. But up to
now, records of years past remain in disarray, preventing scores of
ARMM teachers from obtaining a loan, among other things.
“We’re not talking of
millions; we’re talking of a billion pesos here, for GSIS alone,
for the whole of ARMM,” Guiani-Sayadi said.
She added that there is no exact
figure of how many teachers in the ARMM have been victimized by the
GSIS-Education department mess. But she laments that so many
teachers who have left the service have yet to receive their
benefits. “Some have died without receiving their retirement
pay,” she said.
The problem is ARMM’s alone, as
Education department in ARMM is autonomous. The national Department
of Education office merely acts as conduit in giving schools in the
region their share of textbooks and chairs.
In the meantime, Guiani-Sayadi
said the Philippine Public School Teachers Association has also
discovered that insurance and death benefits of some 50 teachers
have been claimed and collected even though these educators are
still living – and still at work in schools.
Borrowed students
Observers and ARMM insiders alike
say this has its roots in the late 1990s, during the term of then-ARMM
Governor Nur Misuari. The current administration of Gov. Ampatuan
came to power only in September 2005. In truth, before he could even
warm his seat, Ampatuan faced a major crisis in the Education
department in ARMM. Many of the region’s teachers had failed to
get their pay as department funds had gone missing. Malacañang had
to approve a bailout package, a special grant to cover the
P200-million fund needed for teachers’ salaries a year later.
Before 2005 ended, Ampatuan also
had to create a task force to look into reports of phantom schools
and ghost teachers through ARMM Department Order Number 1. Last
November, Ampatuan himself reported in his second State of the
Region Address: “We have identified a number of schools [that] are
not existing but functional only according to records.”
Guiani-Sayadi said the inventory
has yielded over 10 phantom schools, mostly in Lanao del Sur.
Interestingly, it also unearthed “mobile schools” and
“borrowed students,” practices resorted to by ingenious division
officials to enliven ghost schools. The schemes call for students
from one barangay to go to another to make it appear to inspection
teams that classes exist in regionally funded schools.
The issue has been the subject of
congressional hearings and a special report by the Commission on
Audit. To date, however, no ARMM official has been prosecuted, much
less put behind bars, even for the glaring crime of siphoning off
the teachers’ remittances to the GSIS.
Instead, it is the current crop
of officials who must sift through the records and propose
corrective measures, which may take years to pay and may entail
another bailout by the national government.
‘Missing’ teachers
So far, it is the teachers who
are being made to bear the burden of making up for their missing
contributions, so that they can be considered “good enough” to
take out a loan from the GSIS and other financing institutions.
Yet if there are missing
remittances, there are also “missing” teachers. Guiani-Sayadi
said field checks have yielded no breathing individual for some
teaching items that had been reported as filled and for which
salaries had been collected regularly. There have also been cases of
retired or dead teachers who continued to be paid ¯ until an audit
put a stop to it.
Guiani-Sayadi also tells of an
elderly woman who came to collect her teacher-daughter’s salary.
There was something about the woman that pricked Guiani-Sayadi’s
curiosity, though, and a thorough check of the daughter’s records
was conducted. After a double check out on field, it was confirmed
that the daughter was no longer teaching – and had been working
overseas for years.
As Guiani-Sayadi describes it,
pay collection time at ARMM can be very interesting. She recalls one
woman who showed up in a burqa, which reveals only the eyes of the
wearer. She said she told the person who was in charge of the
payroll, “Let her talk, listen to her voice.” Her advice was
heeded, and the woman was discovered to have already collected her
pay.
Yet as if all these were not
enough, there have also been approved teaching items that were made
to appear to have been granted to two, and even up to as many as
nine, teachers. Guiani-Sayadi theorizes that some unscrupulous
individuals at the Education department had taken advantage of the
mess in the personnel files, and had forged documents to collect the
salaries of the “excess” teachers. That is assuming, of course,
that at least one teacher actually occupied the position.
ARMM Education department
insiders said this setup should not be confused with the
“subcontracted” teachers, or those who had been hired by the
real post occupants. As the insiders tell it, those who have the
cheek to do this are usually the teachers who got their posts by
bribing Education officials. These teachers, they say, see no reason
to show up in school, except when collecting their pay. But they do
hire someone else to teach in their stead, whom they pay a fraction
of their salary while they pocket the difference.
‘Organized crime’
An ARMM official who declines to
be named said the reasoning of these teachers goes like this:
“Binayaran ko na noon ang puwesto ko, bakit pa ako papasok [I have
paid for my position, why do I have to work]?”
Another former teacher in
Maguindanao said, “Those who bought their positions cannot be
forced to teach.”
Observers and educators in the
region say the practice ¯ which is not exactly uncommon ¯ has gone
unchecked because DepEd officials rarely conduct surprise visits.
Oftentimes, visits are announced beforehand because, says one
educator, “of security concerns.” Unfortunately, this also
allows the misbehaving teachers to prepare and cover their tracks.
Guiani-Sayadi has taken to
calling the various scams at ARMM Education department as “an
organized crime.” She asked, “How can this happen without the
connivance of officials in the past? Who signed the
certifications?”
The so-called “golden hands”
that are masters in forging documents and signatures, though, are at
work even outside of the Education department. At least one former
mid-level education supervisor in the ARMM province of Maguindanao
said she has encountered several teachers whose school records and
eligibility papers were dubious.
It’s no wonder that
Guiani-Sayadi said her job has made her toughen up. A fast-talking,
no-nonsense woman, she pointed to her heart and said, “You have to
be strong here. If they start crying, will you tolerate it, knowing
it’s wrong?”
At the very least, some local
governments have started admitting their own education systems need
to be fixed.
Revisiting records
Maguindanao Provincial
Administrator Norie Unas, for instance, acknowledges his province
has its share of “ghost teachers,” although he said it’s a
legacy of past governments. “We had to revisit our records,
reconcile them with what’s on the ground, as well as the records
of the DepEd [Department of Education] ARMM and DepEd national,”
he said.
At the regional level, Ampatuan
has mandated that each Cabinet meeting begin with a report on
remittances by each department head.
Guiani-Sayadi said this is the
kind of attitude the region needs. She added that local officials
have to scrutinize decades-old records to be able to separate chaff
from the grain.
She also recommends a healthy
dose of transparency. She said the forgery should be reported and
openly discussed, so that the records can be corrected and can start
reflecting fact instead of fiction.
The ARMM solicitor general said
as well that town officials and community leaders should activate
their local school boards and involve themselves in the work of
Education department supervisors in their area.
“This [problem] is hard to
solve,” Guiani-Sayadi said. “You need committed people, who care
for the community. And that’s paramount over anything else.”
Putting the community first will
undoubtedly help ease the region’s problems. After all, genuine
concern for one’s community, unlike paperwork, cannot be faked
even by golden hands.
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