N-agwawalis S-a T-abi P-o

AFTER the changes made in the Reserved Officer Training Course or ROTC to the National Service Training Program or NSTP, I have received feedbacks from one of the universities in Baguio.

Students taking NSTP in this university have renamed the acronym into what you see in this week’s column. Taking a cue from their present experience.

Parents have been assailing that instead of learning something, students complain of too much activity tied up with the said developmental program for students.

Imagine, students are forced to attend weekend classes to attend plays in which they are forced to pay a certain amount. This is to catch up with the recommended number of hours as prescribed by the curriculum.

Another is the forced gathering of blood donors in which, a certain number of c.c.'s are needed in order to compensate for the number of hours needed in the course.

And to beat everything else is the weekly cleaning activities in suggested barangay's. My o my, college students who only gets Sunday as their day off to attend to their personal chores have lost the opportunity to do so since even the Sabbath day have been reserved for NSTP.

In one of our weekly Kapihan press briefings where in we talked about disaster preparedness, Police Regional Office Cordillera Dir. Benjamin Magalong mentioned the needed additional manpower especially during calamities and disasters.

This prompted me to ask him the possibility of re-examining the curriculum of NSTP for the possibility of having disaster readiness courses since college students may form part of an effective manpower as far as human resource management is concern.

Take for example a platoon of college students well versed on first aid application. Or a brigade of students educated in rappelling. How about a command of students aware of Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery.

If the students would be given courses on this, then you get to solve the need for manpower.

Senator Loren Legarda in her recent visit to Baguio to launch Project LOREN agrees with this idea. She will look into the possibility of including disaster preparedness trainings for NSTP students.

Since Baguio is identified as an educational center, many students coming from the different provinces have been studying time and time again in the city.

This will equip students with the knowledge of being prepared during disasters and calamities when they go back home to their provinces. And they could even be the additional force multipliers we need during this times.

Well, were still hoping that this be included or even be mandated by the CHED. This is what we call, empowering the students as good members of society. Being ready is better than not.

So to this particular university, re-examine and refine your NSTP course. This is for students not to rename it into "Nagwawalis Sa Tabi Po"!

Oh by the way, according to the political grapevine, there have been talks that a Domogan-Aliping tandem is in the offing based on initial political campaign stickers circulating in the city.

Does this mean that ties between the Highland-lowland politicos of Baguio a now numbered? Or, survival of the fittest is still the name of the game? Till next week!