(Last of two parts)
MANILA, Philippines — When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to shut down last year, the Department of Education (DepEd) promised to provide a “menu of options” for students, teachers and parents.
Deemed one of the most accessible methods of teaching offered was by television, in which students who could not enroll in online classes were guided by teachers in distance learning.
A DepEd survey conducted during last year’s enrollment period showed that 1.3 million parents preferred TV instruction for their children over other methods.
ILLUSTRATION BY RENE ELEVERA
The TV teachers offered hope for the “lost generation” — the children left behind due to a deadly virus that has forced an overhaul of the Philippine education system.
In July 2020, the DepEd partnered with Ei2Tech, a private production company owned by veteran TV broadcaster Paolo Bediones, to set up DepEd TV.
Producing 20-minute video lectures that covered the most essential learning competencies in different grade levels, DepEd TV aired episodes for the first quarter of the school year, from October to December, with the help of some 400 media workers and professionals hired by Ei2Tech.
But by the second quarter, internal problems such as delayed pay of the workers hired by Ei2Tech had crippled the operations of the production. The problems behind the scenes, said one of the former executive producers (EP) hired by the company, were a “disservice” to the students.
Libel threat
After at least three months of working nonstop for DepEd TV without proper compensation, 15 of the project’s executive producers wrote a letter to Bediones asking for an explanation of the delayed release of their talent fees.
But this letter, which was sent in confidence to Bediones in December, was later leaked to a local tabloid without the knowledge of the EPs involved.
“When Bediones found out that the letter was leaked to the media, he threatened us in a group chat that he would sue us [for] libel,” George Gamayo, former DepEd TV executive producer, told the Inquirer.
“He told us that the burden of proof was now on us to prove that we did not [leak] it out of malice, stressing that the letter was released to the media just to taint his image and get our fees,” he recalled.
The DepEd, through Undersecretary Alain Pascua, issued on Dec. 2 a statement denying that the production workers had yet to be paid despite working nonstop for months.
While he admitted to “delays in the processing of full payments for contractors who have already completed what is required of them,” Pascua insisted that only less than 10 had not received their pay due to resignation, unprocessed bank accounts, nonexistent official receipts “for proper liquidation,” or failure to turn over unfinished outputs.
“Allegations relative to Ei2Tech workers not receiving salaries are baseless because, as per Ei2Tech, there is no employer-employee relationship,” Pascua said.
Gamayo said these problems remained unresolved due to the company’s failure to process official receipts.
He said the 15 EPs who wrote to Bediones seeking an explanation for the delay in the release of their compensation had at least four to six other teammates who had not received even a peso for their hard work.
They did not include the staff who were not directly involved with production and postproduction, Gamayo said.
‘Promise’
Gamayo had a full-time job as a content and marketing head when he was recruited to join DepEd TV as an EP. Being a part-time lecturer in a state university, he recognized the “promise” of the project.
“When I saw the chance to achieve my goal of advocating quality education through DepEd TV, I instantly grabbed it,” said Gamayo, who quit his job to join the project. “Little did I know this is what’s going to happen to us.”
From initial meetings with Ei2Tech, an executive producer checks the scripts and episodes before airing. A talent fee of P60,000 a month was to be paid, as agreed via Zoom call.
Jag San Mateo, a retrenched employee of ABS-CBN, admitted that he agreed to work on the project as an EP even without a contract.
“Most of the people in production knew each other,” he said. “Paolo Bediones, whose name is big in the industry, is involved, and they told us not to worry because they’re working on it, so it gave us assurance.”
But as soon as the “mad scramble to get everything in place” began, Gamayo and San Mateo’s roles began to evolve. They had to direct shoots, revise the scripts written by the teachers, and come up with more TV-friendly treatments and spiels.
They were also inputting instructions for shooting, editing graphics, and, when they were done with the script, submitting it to the DepEd for quality check. When the revised script was returned to them, they proceeded to shooting, in which they also directed and guided the teachers on proper presentation.
“It’s like we’re not just executive producers but also episode producers,” San Mateo said.
The dry run was to air on Sept. 15-16, 2020, giving them only two weeks, but the teachers and modules were still lacking then.
The worst part for San Mateo was this: “Imagine one EP handling 10 subjects, and all of these are supposed to air in one week—which means that the EP has a limited amount of time to produce around 60 episodes. It’s overwhelming and impossible,” he said.
The initial 13 EPs said they could not meet the deadline. So the company hired more people, adding 21 EPs to the staff.
‘Contract coercion’
When the pool of EPs was expanded, San Mateo said, they were told that a quota of 20 episodes per month should be delivered before they could receive the P60,000 talent fee—a provision that was not part of the initial agreement.
On Sept. 30, after a full month of working on the project, a contract that did not indicate specific payment terms and job descriptions was emailed to the production staff.
San Mateo said he refused to sign the contract because it did not include their rights as workers and was just absolving the company of responsibilities.
Some EPs including Gamayo requested revisions, which the management ignored. Instead, he said, they were told that their performance would be evaluated in the first week, and they would not get their Oct. 15 pay if they did not sign the contract.
“A few of us felt that we were coerced to sign—either we get our talent fee or not,” Gamayo said.
The regular broadcast of DepEd TV began on Oct. 5, the opening of school year 2020-2021. Staff members were told that what they were doing was based on output, which was where the quota came in. San Mateo then wondered: “What will happen to our service from August to September?”
At one point, the management handed out checks, saying these were the initial payment or “aid”—as the coordinator referred to it—for the work the staff rendered before Oct. 5.
San Mateo said he got only P15,000. The issue remains unresolved.
But what angered former DepEd TV illustrator Eman Paelmo was the way Bediones had treated “those in the lower ranks.” “At first we were all being praised but later when we started asking about our payment, there was no compassion and understanding,” he said.
At a press conference on March 2, Paelmo recounted a heated conversation he had with Bediones after he posted his concerns about Ei2Tech online.
Paelmo was among the production members evicted from an online group chat, which, he said, amounted to his being removed from his position.
But after months of following up on his concerns, he never received a formal termination letter or separation pay, Paelmo said. He is also yet to receive his long overdue talent fee from Ei2Tech and DepEd TV, where he worked as an illustrator for at least three months.
“Bediones kept on downplaying the hardships of us in the lower ranks who were already suffering because of the pandemic,” Paelmo said.
Emotional torture
On March 9, preliminary results of the Philippine Statistics Authority’s labor force survey in January showed that more than 4 million Filipinos lost their jobs due to the pandemic, as the unemployment rate rose to 8.7 percent from 5.3 percent in 2020.
The numbers include some of DepEd TV’s staff.
Gamayo said most of his teammates who lost their jobs last year relied on the compensation they were hoping to get from the project to fund their most essential needs, from the medication of a loved one to emergency situations.
As EP, Gamayo was always at the receiving end of his coworkers’ laments. “There was one who messaged me that one of our team members wanted to commit suicide. It was emotionally exhausting, and it was as if I was being emotionally tortured because my team is my liability,” he said, adding:
“I talked to everyone. I became an absorber [of their problems] … I don’t want them to think that I also abandoned them because that was what they were already experiencing from the Ei2Tech management.”
Silence
The DepEd TV staff first made their concerns public in December, but Bediones has been silent on the matter. The Inquirer repeatedly sought him out for comment, to no avail.
Bediones’ refusal to publicly deal with the matter only raises more questions, San Mateo said.
On Feb. 11, DepEd TV earned an honorable mention in the crisis and conflict response category of the Mobiles for Education Alliance 10th Anniversary Event and Award Show.
Pascua thanked the production team, writers, directors, researchers and teacher broadcasters of DepEd TV—a statement that San Mateo found “ironic.”
But despite his “traumatic experience” at DepEd TV, San Mateo said he could not see himself working in any other industry.
He said his contributions to the project, which both he and Gamayo described as “the most exhausting months of our lives in … the media industry,” only encouraged him to fight.
“This is not just the issue of compensation in one production company. This is connected to all the other issues that media workers everywhere in the country are facing every day,” San Mateo said. “I’d like to stay in the media industry but at the same time, I’d like to continue the fight for better rights for media workers everywhere.”