Teachers Rep. France Castro. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — If the national government will just realign half or even one-third of the P19.1 billion proposed budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) next year, it will go a long way in the production go self-learning modules (SLMs) that students can use.
This was according to ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro on Thursday as she backed calls to realign the budget of the controversial NTF-ELCAC, which has been making headlines recently in relation to red-tagging issues, to basic services.
“Education will be one of the sectors which can benefit from the realignment of funds from the terrorist-tagging task force,” Castro, a member of the House of Representatives’ Makabayan bloc, said in a statement.
“Instead of lies, fake news, and relentless red-tagging, and policies and activities that terrorize the people into silence, the people’s taxes will be spent for the dire needs of teachers and students in the blended mode of learning,” she added.
By re-channeling the NTF-ELCAC funds, Castro said it will lessen the burden of teachers “so that they will not be left to their own devices and spend for these expenses out of their own pockets.”
“The country was devastated by the past typhoons, most especially those located in the hardest-hit areas where learning modules are soaked, damaged, and torn into pieces,” Castro said.
“More storms and disasters are sure to come and [the Department of Education] and the Duterte government must never adopt the thinking that schools and teachers should take the ‘initiative’ in dealing with these,” she added.
The rest of funds of the NTF-ELCAC, Castro said, should go to the medical and socio-economic needs of the people including those in disaster-prone areas.
“Every time the country is hit by natural calamities, schools are the first evacuation centers, and teachers and non-teaching personnel are the first responders,” Castro said.
“We reiterate: The people’s taxes must go to the people, to attend to their needs, and to ease their hardships—not to terrorist-tagging sprees, witchhunting against progressives, terrorization of the masses,” she added.