Group demands aid for teachers afflicted with or died of COVID-19

Teachers demand financial aid for 1,446 of their colleagues who got sick or died of COVID-19 since the hard lockdown against March 2020.
| Contributed photo

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—-The Action and Solidarity for the Empowerment of Teachers (Assert) on Wednesday presented an initial list of 1,446 public school teachers who got sick or died of COVID-19, demanding the P50,000 aid promised by Education Secretary Leonor Briones.

Briones promised financial assistance in an online dialogue with teachers last Oct. 11, according to Assert secretary-general Fidel Fababier in a phone interview.

Assert submitted the list to the Department of Education office in Pasig City. The list of COVID-19 victims was reckoned from March 16, 2020, when Proclamation 929 of President Duterte placed Luzon and other areas under a state of calamity due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In that Oct. 11 dialogue, Briones asserted having given P50,000 to teachers in Metro Manila infected by or died of COVID-19.

“As we continue to adhere to our education department’s ‘No child left behind’ policy, we also raise our lingering concerns over our government’s long criminal neglect, if not total abandonment, of its more than 900,000 public school teachers and education support personnel, who daily bear the brunt of the new education normal,” Fababier said.

Briones reported using money from the Provident Fund.

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