Teachers sacked over school exec’s resignation

BAGUIO CITY—The Civil Service Commission (CSC) dismissed 12 teachers of Mountain Province State Polytechnic College (MPSPC) in Bontoc town, Mountain Province, for their alleged role in forcing their former college president to resign during one of the protest rallies mounted against the school official in 2011.

Dan Evert Sokoken, the faculty representative to the MPSPC board of trustees, said he and 11 other teachers received the CSC ruling on Dec. 16.

The CSC, in a Dec. 8 ruling, found the teachers guilty of violating civil service rules for taking part in protest rallies that rocked the MPSPC Bontoc campus, over the community’s apparent dissatisfaction with former MPSPC president Nieves Dacyon’s performance.

Dacyon has left the college and now runs another college in the Cordillera region. She has not responded to telephone calls or text messages from the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Dismissed were Sokoken, Terrence Fang-asan, Dario Guinayen, Bruce Aswigue, Charlie Engngeg, Jason Omaweng, Eric Fulangen, Peter Puma-at, Beverly Chaokas, Daniela Chumacog, Angelita Bayle and Nellie Diaz.

But MPSPC has not enforced the CSC ruling, and the teachers continue to remain part of its faculty, Sokoken said.

“We have coordinated with our lawyers to contest the ruling or seek the agency’s reconsideration,” said Sokoken, who is an instructor in the college’s business management and entrepreneurship program.

Speaking on behalf of the dismissed teachers, Sokoken said they did not instigate the rallies staged from June 28 to July 1, 2011, which also involved members of the Bontoc community.

In a July 2011 complaint, MPSPC Faculty Club urged the board of trustees to remove Dacyon for her “gross insensitivity to faculty benefits, allegedly flawed work assignments for personnel, gross partiality, personnel harassment, lack of transparency, inequitable distribution of supplies and office equipment and questionable designation of [the 2011 MPSPC vice president for academic affairs].”

But the complaint was filed after the July 1 incident, when a group of protesters barged into Dacyon’s office with a prepared resignation letter addressed to the MPSPC board that she signed under duress.

The college’s previous set of trustees refused to honor Dacyon’s resignation and ordered an investigation on the campus protests on July 6, 2011.

Government agencies, like the Commission on Higher Education, gathered community leaders to mediate a settlement after Dacyon sued the teachers and students whom she accused of organizing the rallies.

But the three mediation sessions failed, Sokoken said, and the lawsuits filed by the college and by Dacyon proceeded.

Three of the students who took part in the rally have graduated but have not been cleared by MPSPC due to the lingering conflict. They are standing trial on Feb. 16 next year for charges of criminal trespass and grave coercion, following a pretrial process that ended this month, Sokoken said.

He said MPSPC had not drawn anymore controversies since 2011 because a new set of school officials had instituted reforms. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon