Consensus bill seeks 2-year mandatory NCST, 4-year optional ROTC program

This undated file photo shows Reserve Officers Training Corps, or ROTC, cadets reporting to their officers at the Sunken Garden of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. Philippine Daily Inquirer/Lyn Rillon

MANILA, Philippines — A consensus bill seeking to make a two-year mandatory national citizens’ service training program (NCST) and a four-year optional Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program has been presented at the Senate.

Commission on Higher Education Director Spocky Farolan on Tuesday said that the consensus bill was crafted after a series of discussions.

“The bill will be institutionalizing, if passed, a two-year mandatory national citizens’ service training program in tertiary education. When we say tertiary education, it includes higher education,” Farolan said during the Senate Committee on Higher, Technical and Vocational Education hearing.

Tertiary education refers to college.

The mandatory NCST would also be covered in vocational courses, which extend up to two years at least, offered by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).

Tesda courses that are taken up for less than two years will have special citizens seminars and programs.

The consensus bill also pushes for a four-year voluntary ROTC program.

“The four-year optional ROTC program, it would really be geared towards producing officers for the regular and reserve force,” said Farolan.

Should a student push to pursue the ROTC program after the mandatory NCST program, he/she will just take another two years for the ROTC program, said Farolan.

Both the NCST and ROTC programs are for male and female students.

Meanwhile, University of the Philippines (UP) Vanguard Inc. Chairman Emeritus Gilbert Raymund Reyes recommended an independent commission that will administer the programs.

“In the view of the UP Vanguard, it is our considered recommendation that this is best performed by an independent commission as suggested in the bill of Senator JV Ejercito,” Reyes said in the same hearing.

“The primary reason for this is basically the concept of a single point of responsibility,” he added.

The independent commission, Reyes said, will include all concerned stakeholders.

In President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s first state of the nation address, he called on the Congress to pass a law mandating the ROTC program for senior high school students.

JMS