Thursday, June 07, 2007 Speak out: Osmeña’s action By Jose Aaron Pedrosa Jr. Sanlakas Youth-Youth Against Debt
IN a country where daily per capita government spending for education is only P4.51 as against P19.21 for debt service, canceling the construction of a school building is ill-advised.
This country is lacking in school facilities and teaching personnel.
A Freedom from Debt Coalition 2006 study showed the following facts: classroom shortage: 44,000, textbook shortage: 25 million, desks shortage: 6 million and public school teachers’ shortage: close to 50,000.
While the national government prides in having solved these problems, the truth remains that the situation this year is as unimpressive as last year.
For instance, the 1:50 classroom-pupil ratio may have lowered classroom shortage data.
But in reality, public schools follow a double shift schedule to accommodate the increasing student population.
This is akin to the government’s redefinition of the unemployment standards that lowered unemployment figures but did not reflect actual prevailing conditions.
Yet, despite this reality, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña still decided to scrap the construction of a four story, 20–classroom school building at the Lahug Elementary School three days before resumption of classes.
The school’s population was already 5,000 students in 2006, said City Hall’s education consultant.
Crowding in classrooms was therefore inevitable given the projected rise in the school’s population this year.
Osmeña said he scrapped the Lahug project to punish Lahug Barangay Captain Mary Ann de los Santos, but the move in effect punishes pupils for an offense only the mayor finds contemptible.
And it will result in the swelling of the number of students per classroom.
Yet to the mayor this seems reasonable even as he proceeded to cut the barangay’s subsidy for fuel and garbage collection.
Politics of retribution has become the order of the day, with the innocent pupils as collateral damage.
One person’s vindictive act resulted in the pupils in Lahug being deprived of classrooms.
But if the mayor wants to play deaf to appeals by Lahug parents, to the criticisms or to the call of his conscience, he should at least consider the sorry state of the education sector.
With meager education budget compared with government allocation for debt service, one school building project scuttled will aggravate the situation.
