‘Kristel’ lives on, challenges poll bets

The next suicide to rock the country’s education system might be that of an underpaid teacher.

This and other concerns over the state of the country’s public schools, including state universities and colleges (SUCs), came to surface on Wednesday at the 1st Inquirer Senate Forum, whose participants included the father of the college student who took her own life last month reportedly over tuition problems.

Students in the audience particularly applauded the moment when Cris Tejada took the microphone and posed questions to the senatorial candidates gathered at the University of the Philippines Film Center in Diliman, Quezon City.

Tejada, one of the special guests, came in a shirt bearing the image of his daughter Kristel, the UP Manila student whose suicide at her Tondo home on March 15 triggered campus mass actions and prompted the UP community to review its student support program.

He asked the candidates if they favor full government subsidies for SUCs and, in particular, making the UP system tuition-free.

Reelectionist Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano of the administration’s Team PNoy ticket noted that it was the Arroyo administration which made it a policy for SUCs to become self-sufficient or find mean to raise their own funds.

“We changed that policy.  If education is an investment, the government should throw all its money on education so that every citizen gets it for free,’’ Cayetano said. “The No. 1 asset God gave to Filipinos is not gold, nickel or natural gas but the people.’’

In his home city of Taguig, for example, Cayetano said the local government had allotted P300 million for education, with poor but deserving students receiving as much as P40,000 each in allowances from the City Hall.

Former Sen. Richard Gordon, who is trying to make a comeback under the United Nationalist Alliance, said “overworked” teachers should not be left behind in any effort to improve the public education system.

“The secret to education is the teachers. If we do not pay them well now, we’re not going to get any advances. The poor will remain poor. I predict the next suicide (will be) a teacher,” he said, alluding to Kristel’s case.

Gordon noted that Filipino public school teachers get only a monthly salary of P17,000, compared to their counterparts in Japan who get the equivalent of P125,000; in Singapore, P92,000; in South Korea, P85,000; and in China, P35,000.

“This is not a question of standard of living but of the government’s commitment to prioritizing education.  If we don’t pay teachers well, we lose,” he said.

He added that SUCs should be more compassionate toward students who incur loans, and proposed that they be given “15 years to pay after graduation.’’

“That is the investment.  Allow them to work to pay back the loan,” he added.