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Thursday, July 13, 2006
Congressman gets education portfolio
REPRESENTATIVE Jesli Lapus of Tarlac was appointed on Wednesday as secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd) amid a threat by the DepEd union that they will protest his appointment.
Lapus, chairman of the House committee on ways and means, said "the awesome challenge of restoring the country's past world-class quality of education is a mission of a lifetime" is his goal.
"The very future rests on the quality of our human resource. We will do our utmost as failure is not an option," Lapus added.
Lapus expressed confidence that he would be able to work it out with the DepEd union, claiming that he was able to weather the challenges brought upon by the union of the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) where he served as president.
“Hindi pa tayo kilala protesta na? (They don’t even know me that well and yet they are already protesting? Weird,” said Lapus in a text message.
Lapus asked the protesting employees to watch him work before making any judgment.
“I doubt if they do represent the 600,000 employees. Anyway, I have always worked extremely well with reasonable unions,” he added.
Lapus is the author of a bill that streamlined the infamous multibillion-peso automatic payroll deductions scheme at DepEd, which has adversely affected the net pay of public school teachers.
The congressman was an original core faculty of the Asian Institute of Management Masters in Development Management Program and taught at the Ateneo de Manila University and Maryknoll College.
Lapus's position at the House will be passed on to a senior officer of the ways and means committee.
Among his possible replacement are Negros Oriental Representative Herminio Teves and Antique Representative Exequiel Javier. (DBP/Sunnex)
(July 13, 2006 issue)
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