This is an excerpt from the Weblog of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (http://pcij.org/blog) related to the recent series of scandals that rocked the Presidency, and more...
June 13, 2005 @ 5:55 pm
Posted by Yvonne Chua Filed under General, In the News
IN his comment on the post "The missing pieces," cy_nick asked about the scandals that have rocked the Arroyo administration. Besides the two current controversies, now being called the "Juetenggate" and "Gloriagate," we’ve come up with this initial list. Feel free to add to it.
IMPSA: Four days after it assumed office, the Arroyo administration approved the awarding of a controversial $470-million contract to the Argentine firm IMPSA (Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona Sociedad Anonima) to rehabilitate a hydroelectric plant in Laguna. Justice Secretary Hernando Perez was later accused of demanding and receiving $2 million dollars from ex-Rep. Mark Jimenez, who brokered the deal. Jimenez said he wired the amount to the account of Ernest Escaler in Hong Kong on Feb. 23, 2001 from his bank in Uruguay. The former congressman has been extradited to the United States and has pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud and making illegal campaign contributions.
SAN FRANCISCO: From the time she was first elected senator in 1992, President Arroyo had failed to declare in her sworn Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth the properties her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, bought in San Francisco through his California-based LTA Realty Corp. Newsbreak reported that Mr. Arroyo acquired, re-sold, and managed at least five properties with a total value of at least $7.1 million in the Bay City from 1992 to 2000. The First Couple said they bought the properties in trust for Mr. Arroyo’s younger brother, Ignacio, now a congressman.
BONG PINEDA: President Arroyo got loudly questioned about her personal connection with alleged jueteng boss Bong Pineda: She is godmother to one of Pineda’s sons. She denied any impropriety, saying she doesn’t associate with Pineda or his crowd. In an interview with Time Magazine in 2001, she said that when she was asked to be godmother, she got counsel from then archbishop of Manila Jaime Cardinal Sin. "Cardinal Sin said, as a Christian, if I am asked to be a godmother, it is my Christian duty," she relates, "because the sins of the father are not the sins of the son."
MIKEY’S HORSES: Newsbreak broke the news on a plan of first presidential son Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo to import the 32 thoroughbred horses from Melbourne, Australia. The then Pampanga vice governor, now a congressman, denied the allegation. He admitted, though, he was in the horse trade business; he owns Franchino Farms along with cousin Franchino Pamintuan and friend Ralph Mondragon.JOSE PIDAL: On Aug. 18, 2003, opposition senator Panfilo Lacson accused First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo of money laundering for supposedly siphoning off at least P321 million in campaign funds and contributions to a secret bank account under the fictitious name Jose Pidal and three other accounts using the names of his aides. Among the “donors,” Lacson said, was then Rep. Mark Jimenez who contributed a total of P8 million. Lacson also accused Mr. Arroyo of having an affair with his accountant, Victoria Toh. Following Lacson’s allegations, Mr. Arroyo’s younger brother, Ignacio, came forward to say he is Jose Pidal.
AGRI FUND: First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo was linked in May 2004 to the alleged diversion of P728 million from the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program to President Arroyo’s campaign war chest in the form of development assistance funds to local government units. Then Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn I. Bolante, Mr. Arroyo’s classmate at the Ateneo de Manila University and a colleague at the Rotary Club District 3830, cleared the First Gentleman of involvement. Bolante was tasked to oversee the implementation of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program at the time.
PHILHEALTH CARDS: Six weeks before the May 2004 elections, two lawyers from PRO-CON(stitution) filed a disqualification case against President Arroyo before the Comelec, saying she was behind the enhanced Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s Greater Medicare Access or GMA program which they claimed was meant to prop up her candidacy. Earlier, another PRO-CON lawyer filed a criminal suit, also before the Comelec, against then PCSO chief Maria Livia “Honeygirl” de Leon and PhilHealth president (now Health Secretary) Francisco T. Duque for vote buying, intervention of a public officer, using public funds for election purposes and using banned election propaganda. Public funds were allegedly spent to enroll families in PhilHealth for one year to induce the enrollees to vote for President Arroyo. The premium cost of P1,200 for each family member was chargeable to PhilHealth and the PCSO. The PhilHealth identification cards bore the President’s picture and the name. Their distribution coincided with the start of the election campaign.
LAS VEGAS SUITE: First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo was the subject of another controversy over his alleged use of a $20,000-a-night suite at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada during the boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Mexico’s Erick Morales last March 19. The story first appeared as a blind item in the March 23 column of Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad which said a "heavyweight backer" of Pacquiao had stayed in the $20,000 suite at the MGM Grand. The column did not mention Mr. Arroyo. Mr. Arroyo said he did not see anything corrupt about accepting a generous offer of a suite from the hotel as he thought that his stature as the husband of a head of state entitled him to such perks.
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Monday, June 13, 2005
Sunday, June 05, 2005
When Classes Open Today, Many Boys Won't Be in School
Posted on 5 June 2005
by YVONNE T. CHUA
"WHERE ARE the boys?"
Quezon City Schools Division supervisor Beth Meneses has been asking this question the past several years. On really bad days, she says, as many as one in five of the male students in the city's high schools could be anywhere — the streets, the canteen, the mall, the computer gaming shop — but in the classroom.
Throughout the country, even in Muslim Mindanao where girls have traditionally been kept out of the classroom, public high school teachers have been worrying about the boys. When classes open today and teachers in jampacked classrooms survey a sea of mostly female faces, they will again be wondering where the boys are.
Some teachers have personally hunted down the wayward teenagers, or at least sent the female students to chase after them. If the boys aren't brought back immediately to the classroom, the teachers say, the school system would lose a number of them for good.
Boys have long been more likely to drop out of school than girls in either the grade- or high school level. But as more families require more hands to generate income, parents and teachers get busier, and teenage distractions multiply, the ratio of males to females exiting prematurely from high school has worsened.
There were three male dropouts for every two female dropouts in high school eight years ago. There are now two for every one.
Boys are also leaving school earlier. Of the 211,171 male dropouts in schoolyear 2003-2004, 43 percent were freshmen or 13- to 14-year-olds. There are so many boys dropping out that only 57 of every 100 boys who entered first year end up with a high school diploma, compared to 71 girls.
Indicators in Public Secondary Education, Schoolyear 2002-2003
INDICATOR TOTAL MALE FEMALE
Gross Enrolment Ratio (%) 65.66 62.96 68.41
Net Enrolment Ratio (%) 45.56 41.76 49.44
Cohort Survival Rate (%) 63.88 56.71 71.22
Years Input per Graduate 5.66 6.24 5.19
Graduation Rate (%) 90.62 88.41 92.58
Promotion Rate (%) 83.82 78.49 88.97
Repetition Rate (%) 2.81 4.35 1.32
Failure Rate (%) 9.6 12.59 6.72
Dropout Rate (%) 6.58 8.92 4.31
SOURCE: Department of Education
The trend has altered the landscape of high schools, especially public ones, which account for 80 percent of student enrolment. Across the country, girls now outnumber boys in secondary education. While the excess of high school girls stands at seven percent on average, the gender imbalance is more pronounced in some parts of the country, where females outnumber the males by as much as 30 percent.
Says Eusebio San Diego, Quezon City's values education supervisor: "We keep talking about discrimination against women, but it's the boys we've forgotten."
There are now far more illiterate boys than girls. As a result, more men are jobless and subsequently suffer from low self-esteem. As it is, three out of five unemployed Filipino are now male while nearly 70 percent of today's overseas Filipino workers are female.
Ironically, one of the more frequently cited reasons why boys have gone missing from school is that they have to work. Educators say the deepening poverty in the country is forcing more schoolchildren — usually the boys — to contribute to the family coffers.
About 2.5 million or two-thirds of the four million working children are male, mostly from the rural areas and households with about six members, according to a 2001 survey on children by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
National Achievement Test - Fourth Year, Schoolyear 2003-2004
SUBJECT MALE FEMALE
English 44.08 50
Science 33.52 35.16
Mathematics 31.11 32.36
Total Test 36.24 39.17
SOURCE: Department of Education
San Diego says that poor families tend to make the boys work because they are considered to be more physically able than girls. In broken homes, mothers also expect the boys to take on the father's role. "They are depended on to help support the family," he says.
Because boys generally perform poorer in school, it also seems easier for parents to make them quit and get a job. "Parents would tell kids, 'If you're not doing well in school, drop out and work,'" says Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz.
Most rural boys help farm and fish, says Rene Romero, presidential assistant on special projects and concerns at the Philippine Normal University (PNU). They also land temporary jobs in street diggings or drainage clearings. In some places, says Romero, young boys are employed in "light" work, such as collecting jueteng bets.
The NSO survey found that working boys who are still in school tend to have difficulty catching up with the lessons. Parents, in turn, find that work has affected their children's school performance, pointing to low grades and declining interest in learning.
More than a third of the country's four million child workers had stopped or dropped out of school. Male dropouts outnumbered the females with a ratio of 2:1, citing loss of interest in schooling as the top reason. Others dropped out because their families could not afford their education.
On the whole, Luz says, loss of interest is the chief reason that boys — whether working or not — give up on school. "Boys tend to do poorly than girls," he says. "As they become frustrated, they tend to drop out."
Overall, boys indeed score lower than girls in the National Achievement Test, which checks a child's learning in English, science and math. The biggest difference lies in English, where the boys' scores are five to six percentage points lower than girls'.
More boys (4.35 percent) than girls (1.32 percent) also have to repeat a year level. It also takes boys longer to finish high school: 6.24 years compared to the girls' 5.19 years.
These do not mean the boys are mentally inferior, emphasizes Gertrudes Macusi, assistant to the principal of Ramon Magsaysay High School in Quezon City. They are simply less academically prepared for various reasons, including their inattentiveness in class.
PNU's Romero says that girls value education more than boys do because they no longer see themselves merely staying at home when they grow up; they expect to have careers. Boys tend to assume they would be able to work even without finishing school. Says Romero: "If you let a girl study, she's more likely to finish and find a job here or overseas. You don't have to force them. But with boys, the parents have to force them to finish their schooling."
Girls, he adds, have good study habits compared to boys who have less patience and less endurance for studying, especially in reading and language subjects. Meneses, who taught English for more than two decades before becoming supervisor last year, agrees. "Boys don't like reading at all," she says. "They think reading is girl stuff."
San Francisco High School guidance counselor Philip Austria also observes, "We find that the problematic boys were lazy since elementary. Their study habits weren't formed. They're in second year, but they can't read and write English. They can't understand the lessons. Nababagot sila, naaburido sila (They get annoyed, they get frustrated)."
When that happens, some boys just give up. Jonathan Boadilla of Agoo, La Union was 15 when he enrolled at the town's President Elpidio Quirino National High School five years ago. When the second semester opened, he walked up to his teacher and returned all his books. He was quitting, he declared, because "school was hard."
Boadilla's mother persuaded him to return the following year, but he still passed freshman year with difficulty. Sophomore year turned out to be even harder for him. When the term ended, Boadilla had flunked his math and was asked by the school to enroll in summer class so he could proceed to junior year. He never did.
But grades were not Boadilla's only problems. His mother later found out that he usually cut classes, and instead drank and smoked with his barkada at a sari-sari store near the school. The principal's office kept sending his mother letters about his absences, but one in particular made Beth Boadilla decide to just let her son drop out. "He was caught drinking and smoking in school," she says. "It was embarrassing." In the months that followed, Jonathan's friends also dropped out.
San Diego is not surprised. He points out that adolescent boys are more adventurous, rebellious and daring than adolescent girls, and peer influence is strongest at this stage of development. "Boys are easily convinced (to do stuff) by their friends," he says.
These days the distractions available to the boys come in many forms, among them billiards, the malls and basketball. But educators in urban areas today brand network gaming as among their top foes. Meneses says most boys who miss class hang out in computer shops. "Computer gaming is like a vice," she says. "It's like gambling. You get hooked on computer games. Their allowance for school they use to buy load. I've had male students who lose interest in school because of gaming and drop out. When their teacher scolds them, they stop going to class."
She recalls one student's mother who went around computer shops looking for her son who had gotten hooked on network gaming. The determined mother would march the boy back to school, making sure he finished high school. But the consequence of missing too many classes had set in. The boy was not academically prepared for college or technical school despite having obtained a scholarship from a foreign foundation. Now jobless, he hangs around at the street corner where his mother sells fried bananas and cold drinks.
The problem has also been observed outside Manila. Delia Rivera, a teacher in La Union, recalls that truant boys used to be out playing in the fields or swimming in the river, and would even attend class with wet pants. "Come the 1990s and now, boys are cutting classes and you find them in computer shops," she says.
If not there, they hang out elsewhere. Says Lui Libatique, a master teacher at the Quirino National High School in La Union: "Here, the boys are fond of going out at night, sit under the trees to just talk. They wake up late in the morning and they miss class."
There are, of course, some extreme reasons why boys have gone missing in classes. A World Bank report says many more boys in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao drop out of school in their early teens, and do so about two years earlier than among boys in other parts of the country.
The pattern, the report says, "could be due to the continual armed conflict in the region, its disruptive effects on homes and schools, and its adverse impact on the economy. These consequences appear to have had a more disruptive effect on teenage boys than on girls of the same age. At the same time, early male dropout itself feeds the supply of boys who take up arms."
Still, educators themselves say that sometimes the conditions in the schools, teachers' attitudes, as well as the boys' families are crucial factors in just how long male students would keep going to class.
"Many parents," says Macusi, "are simply not paying enough attention to their children." She says several parents at her school, Ramon Magsaysay, a model institution in the Quezon City educational system, are market vendors and drivers who have to leave home very early and are unaware if their children ever make it to school later in the day. Unfortunately, some of the children head straight for the video and computer shops at Nepa Q Mart, a pedestrian bridge away from the school, rather than to class.
"When the child comes home, his mother is not yet there. The child really has no one to turn to but his friends, his barkada," Macusi says. Still, she says, the reality is that many parents do have to work long hours and cannot be there for their children all the time. "They're too busy. We have to accept that," she says.
Educators say the absence of one parent can have a big effect on a child's — especially a boy's — education. But they differ on which absentee parent has more impact on a boy's drive to go to school.
San Diego says, "When the father is missing, the boy has no one to be afraid of. Boys are scared of their fathers more than their mothers." Yet Romero argues, "When it is the mother who isn't there, it's more likely you won't go to school. The nanay takes care of the baon. The mother would supervise about homework. She is the extension of the school. The father rarely asks about homework or offers a child to help him or her do it."
Educators, though, agree the constant presence and supervision of both parents would minimize juvenile delinquency, which leads partly to the dropout problem. While some are expelled for serious misdemeanors, those who are suspended use that as a reason not to go back to school. Guidance counselor Austria says boys who get into trouble at the San Francisco High School tend to come from broken, large-size families. "They're into marijuana and gambling," he says. "Some cases involve carrying deadly weapons."
Yet even when the boys show up in school relatively ready to learn, it still takes some doing to hold their attention, especially in big, crowded schools. Public high schools have been growing at an annual five percent as hard times force more students to transfer out of private schools and into public institutions.
At the San Francisco High School alone, a standard classroom for 40 has been divided into two classes, each holding 50 to 70 students per section. "We're packed like sardines," says Meneses. She has noticed that the boys get easily irritated and are hot-tempered because they can barely move.
Ballooning school populations have also made monitoring students much harder. In some Quezon City high schools, a teacher handling five to six sections could have as many as 450 students. As a result, the teachers don't know their students well, and can barely tell one from the other.
The sectioning system employed in most schools is no help as well. Quezon City Schools Division journalism supervisor Ligaya Regis says that it only leaves the poor performers among the students even less inspired to improve. "The best teachers are in Sections 1, 2 or 3," she says. "The also-rans are in 29 to 30."
But sometimes, the teachers are themselves the problem. "We need to also discipline teachers," says Austria. "Some teachers don't show up because they're demoralized over low pay, lack of support to their profession, the low evaluation they are getting." Once a teacher is absent, the boys tend to slip out of class and don't return to school for the day, especially if the teacher who is absent happens to be assigned to the first subject of the day.
Austria also laments that some teachers don't mind when some of their students are missing. He observes, "Some teachers even prefer children to be absent. That means less kids whom they have to teach." — with additional reporting by Avigail Olarte
Copyright © 2005 All rights reserved.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
by YVONNE T. CHUA
"WHERE ARE the boys?"
Quezon City Schools Division supervisor Beth Meneses has been asking this question the past several years. On really bad days, she says, as many as one in five of the male students in the city's high schools could be anywhere — the streets, the canteen, the mall, the computer gaming shop — but in the classroom.
Throughout the country, even in Muslim Mindanao where girls have traditionally been kept out of the classroom, public high school teachers have been worrying about the boys. When classes open today and teachers in jampacked classrooms survey a sea of mostly female faces, they will again be wondering where the boys are.
Some teachers have personally hunted down the wayward teenagers, or at least sent the female students to chase after them. If the boys aren't brought back immediately to the classroom, the teachers say, the school system would lose a number of them for good.
Boys have long been more likely to drop out of school than girls in either the grade- or high school level. But as more families require more hands to generate income, parents and teachers get busier, and teenage distractions multiply, the ratio of males to females exiting prematurely from high school has worsened.
There were three male dropouts for every two female dropouts in high school eight years ago. There are now two for every one.
Boys are also leaving school earlier. Of the 211,171 male dropouts in schoolyear 2003-2004, 43 percent were freshmen or 13- to 14-year-olds. There are so many boys dropping out that only 57 of every 100 boys who entered first year end up with a high school diploma, compared to 71 girls.
Indicators in Public Secondary Education, Schoolyear 2002-2003
INDICATOR TOTAL MALE FEMALE
Gross Enrolment Ratio (%) 65.66 62.96 68.41
Net Enrolment Ratio (%) 45.56 41.76 49.44
Cohort Survival Rate (%) 63.88 56.71 71.22
Years Input per Graduate 5.66 6.24 5.19
Graduation Rate (%) 90.62 88.41 92.58
Promotion Rate (%) 83.82 78.49 88.97
Repetition Rate (%) 2.81 4.35 1.32
Failure Rate (%) 9.6 12.59 6.72
Dropout Rate (%) 6.58 8.92 4.31
SOURCE: Department of Education
The trend has altered the landscape of high schools, especially public ones, which account for 80 percent of student enrolment. Across the country, girls now outnumber boys in secondary education. While the excess of high school girls stands at seven percent on average, the gender imbalance is more pronounced in some parts of the country, where females outnumber the males by as much as 30 percent.
Says Eusebio San Diego, Quezon City's values education supervisor: "We keep talking about discrimination against women, but it's the boys we've forgotten."
There are now far more illiterate boys than girls. As a result, more men are jobless and subsequently suffer from low self-esteem. As it is, three out of five unemployed Filipino are now male while nearly 70 percent of today's overseas Filipino workers are female.
Ironically, one of the more frequently cited reasons why boys have gone missing from school is that they have to work. Educators say the deepening poverty in the country is forcing more schoolchildren — usually the boys — to contribute to the family coffers.
About 2.5 million or two-thirds of the four million working children are male, mostly from the rural areas and households with about six members, according to a 2001 survey on children by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
National Achievement Test - Fourth Year, Schoolyear 2003-2004
SUBJECT MALE FEMALE
English 44.08 50
Science 33.52 35.16
Mathematics 31.11 32.36
Total Test 36.24 39.17
SOURCE: Department of Education
San Diego says that poor families tend to make the boys work because they are considered to be more physically able than girls. In broken homes, mothers also expect the boys to take on the father's role. "They are depended on to help support the family," he says.
Because boys generally perform poorer in school, it also seems easier for parents to make them quit and get a job. "Parents would tell kids, 'If you're not doing well in school, drop out and work,'" says Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz.
Most rural boys help farm and fish, says Rene Romero, presidential assistant on special projects and concerns at the Philippine Normal University (PNU). They also land temporary jobs in street diggings or drainage clearings. In some places, says Romero, young boys are employed in "light" work, such as collecting jueteng bets.
The NSO survey found that working boys who are still in school tend to have difficulty catching up with the lessons. Parents, in turn, find that work has affected their children's school performance, pointing to low grades and declining interest in learning.
More than a third of the country's four million child workers had stopped or dropped out of school. Male dropouts outnumbered the females with a ratio of 2:1, citing loss of interest in schooling as the top reason. Others dropped out because their families could not afford their education.
On the whole, Luz says, loss of interest is the chief reason that boys — whether working or not — give up on school. "Boys tend to do poorly than girls," he says. "As they become frustrated, they tend to drop out."
Overall, boys indeed score lower than girls in the National Achievement Test, which checks a child's learning in English, science and math. The biggest difference lies in English, where the boys' scores are five to six percentage points lower than girls'.
More boys (4.35 percent) than girls (1.32 percent) also have to repeat a year level. It also takes boys longer to finish high school: 6.24 years compared to the girls' 5.19 years.
These do not mean the boys are mentally inferior, emphasizes Gertrudes Macusi, assistant to the principal of Ramon Magsaysay High School in Quezon City. They are simply less academically prepared for various reasons, including their inattentiveness in class.
PNU's Romero says that girls value education more than boys do because they no longer see themselves merely staying at home when they grow up; they expect to have careers. Boys tend to assume they would be able to work even without finishing school. Says Romero: "If you let a girl study, she's more likely to finish and find a job here or overseas. You don't have to force them. But with boys, the parents have to force them to finish their schooling."
Girls, he adds, have good study habits compared to boys who have less patience and less endurance for studying, especially in reading and language subjects. Meneses, who taught English for more than two decades before becoming supervisor last year, agrees. "Boys don't like reading at all," she says. "They think reading is girl stuff."
San Francisco High School guidance counselor Philip Austria also observes, "We find that the problematic boys were lazy since elementary. Their study habits weren't formed. They're in second year, but they can't read and write English. They can't understand the lessons. Nababagot sila, naaburido sila (They get annoyed, they get frustrated)."
When that happens, some boys just give up. Jonathan Boadilla of Agoo, La Union was 15 when he enrolled at the town's President Elpidio Quirino National High School five years ago. When the second semester opened, he walked up to his teacher and returned all his books. He was quitting, he declared, because "school was hard."
Boadilla's mother persuaded him to return the following year, but he still passed freshman year with difficulty. Sophomore year turned out to be even harder for him. When the term ended, Boadilla had flunked his math and was asked by the school to enroll in summer class so he could proceed to junior year. He never did.
But grades were not Boadilla's only problems. His mother later found out that he usually cut classes, and instead drank and smoked with his barkada at a sari-sari store near the school. The principal's office kept sending his mother letters about his absences, but one in particular made Beth Boadilla decide to just let her son drop out. "He was caught drinking and smoking in school," she says. "It was embarrassing." In the months that followed, Jonathan's friends also dropped out.
San Diego is not surprised. He points out that adolescent boys are more adventurous, rebellious and daring than adolescent girls, and peer influence is strongest at this stage of development. "Boys are easily convinced (to do stuff) by their friends," he says.
These days the distractions available to the boys come in many forms, among them billiards, the malls and basketball. But educators in urban areas today brand network gaming as among their top foes. Meneses says most boys who miss class hang out in computer shops. "Computer gaming is like a vice," she says. "It's like gambling. You get hooked on computer games. Their allowance for school they use to buy load. I've had male students who lose interest in school because of gaming and drop out. When their teacher scolds them, they stop going to class."
She recalls one student's mother who went around computer shops looking for her son who had gotten hooked on network gaming. The determined mother would march the boy back to school, making sure he finished high school. But the consequence of missing too many classes had set in. The boy was not academically prepared for college or technical school despite having obtained a scholarship from a foreign foundation. Now jobless, he hangs around at the street corner where his mother sells fried bananas and cold drinks.
The problem has also been observed outside Manila. Delia Rivera, a teacher in La Union, recalls that truant boys used to be out playing in the fields or swimming in the river, and would even attend class with wet pants. "Come the 1990s and now, boys are cutting classes and you find them in computer shops," she says.
If not there, they hang out elsewhere. Says Lui Libatique, a master teacher at the Quirino National High School in La Union: "Here, the boys are fond of going out at night, sit under the trees to just talk. They wake up late in the morning and they miss class."
There are, of course, some extreme reasons why boys have gone missing in classes. A World Bank report says many more boys in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao drop out of school in their early teens, and do so about two years earlier than among boys in other parts of the country.
The pattern, the report says, "could be due to the continual armed conflict in the region, its disruptive effects on homes and schools, and its adverse impact on the economy. These consequences appear to have had a more disruptive effect on teenage boys than on girls of the same age. At the same time, early male dropout itself feeds the supply of boys who take up arms."
Still, educators themselves say that sometimes the conditions in the schools, teachers' attitudes, as well as the boys' families are crucial factors in just how long male students would keep going to class.
"Many parents," says Macusi, "are simply not paying enough attention to their children." She says several parents at her school, Ramon Magsaysay, a model institution in the Quezon City educational system, are market vendors and drivers who have to leave home very early and are unaware if their children ever make it to school later in the day. Unfortunately, some of the children head straight for the video and computer shops at Nepa Q Mart, a pedestrian bridge away from the school, rather than to class.
"When the child comes home, his mother is not yet there. The child really has no one to turn to but his friends, his barkada," Macusi says. Still, she says, the reality is that many parents do have to work long hours and cannot be there for their children all the time. "They're too busy. We have to accept that," she says.
Educators say the absence of one parent can have a big effect on a child's — especially a boy's — education. But they differ on which absentee parent has more impact on a boy's drive to go to school.
San Diego says, "When the father is missing, the boy has no one to be afraid of. Boys are scared of their fathers more than their mothers." Yet Romero argues, "When it is the mother who isn't there, it's more likely you won't go to school. The nanay takes care of the baon. The mother would supervise about homework. She is the extension of the school. The father rarely asks about homework or offers a child to help him or her do it."
Educators, though, agree the constant presence and supervision of both parents would minimize juvenile delinquency, which leads partly to the dropout problem. While some are expelled for serious misdemeanors, those who are suspended use that as a reason not to go back to school. Guidance counselor Austria says boys who get into trouble at the San Francisco High School tend to come from broken, large-size families. "They're into marijuana and gambling," he says. "Some cases involve carrying deadly weapons."
Yet even when the boys show up in school relatively ready to learn, it still takes some doing to hold their attention, especially in big, crowded schools. Public high schools have been growing at an annual five percent as hard times force more students to transfer out of private schools and into public institutions.
At the San Francisco High School alone, a standard classroom for 40 has been divided into two classes, each holding 50 to 70 students per section. "We're packed like sardines," says Meneses. She has noticed that the boys get easily irritated and are hot-tempered because they can barely move.
Ballooning school populations have also made monitoring students much harder. In some Quezon City high schools, a teacher handling five to six sections could have as many as 450 students. As a result, the teachers don't know their students well, and can barely tell one from the other.
The sectioning system employed in most schools is no help as well. Quezon City Schools Division journalism supervisor Ligaya Regis says that it only leaves the poor performers among the students even less inspired to improve. "The best teachers are in Sections 1, 2 or 3," she says. "The also-rans are in 29 to 30."
But sometimes, the teachers are themselves the problem. "We need to also discipline teachers," says Austria. "Some teachers don't show up because they're demoralized over low pay, lack of support to their profession, the low evaluation they are getting." Once a teacher is absent, the boys tend to slip out of class and don't return to school for the day, especially if the teacher who is absent happens to be assigned to the first subject of the day.
Austria also laments that some teachers don't mind when some of their students are missing. He observes, "Some teachers even prefer children to be absent. That means less kids whom they have to teach." — with additional reporting by Avigail Olarte
Copyright © 2005 All rights reserved.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Teachers Deplore Dole-out, Demand Immediate Pay Hike for Government Employees
ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED TEACHERS
2/F Teachers’ Center, Mines St. cor. Dipolog St., Bgy.VASRA, Q.C.
Telefax 453-9116
Mobile 0920-9220817
Email actphils@edsamail.com.ph
SEC Registration 0108727
TIN 236-090-727-000
June 2, 2005
Reference: Antonio L. Tinio (0920-9220817)
ACT Chairperson
“Is that it? Is that all this government can give to state workers this year? Crumbs!” This was the reaction of public school teachers to Malacañang’s announcement that it would provide a P1,000 “education assistance” bonus to all government employees.
“We need a salary increase, not a dole-out,” said ACT Chairperson Antonio Tinio.
“Malacañang is giving us crumbs. Meanwhile, corrupt fat cats closely linked to Malacañang rake in huge incomes with this administration’s blessing. WinstonGarcia earns over P300,000 monthly, Mikey Arroyo received P600,000 monthly,” added Tinio. “The vast majority of honest workers in the government bureaucracy live on a pittance. Public school teachers earn a mere P9,939 per month—less than half of the monthly cost of living in Metro Manila.” He noted that the Arroyo government has imposed a crippling salary freeze on state workers since 2001.
Teachers further denounced the Arroyo government for its continuing refusal to provide an immediate salary increase for government employees even as LaborSecretary Patricia Sto. Tomas recently announced that private sector workers in Metro Manila would receive a P25 increase in their daily wage.
“This administration really has no compassion for teachers and government employees,” said Tinio. “It continues to refuse to grant a pay hike this year despite the skyrocketing cost of living. We’re feeling the pain of the economic crisis just as much as our counterparts in the private sector.”
Tinio noted that the P25/day wage hike granted in NCR was well below the P125 increase demanded by workers nationwide. “It’s a measly sum compared to the workers’ demands. At best it would have a marginal impact on the standard of living of wage earners. But something is better than nothing—which is what we’regetting.”
“Enough is enough! Four years without a salary increase is no longer acceptable to public school teachers,” said Tinio. “On the first day of the new school year, we will lead protest actions in schools. In the coming weeks and months, we will launch big rallies and mass leaves to press for our demands.” #
2/F Teachers’ Center, Mines St. cor. Dipolog St., Bgy.VASRA, Q.C.
Telefax 453-9116
Mobile 0920-9220817
Email actphils@edsamail.com.ph
SEC Registration 0108727
TIN 236-090-727-000
June 2, 2005
Reference: Antonio L. Tinio (0920-9220817)
ACT Chairperson
“Is that it? Is that all this government can give to state workers this year? Crumbs!” This was the reaction of public school teachers to Malacañang’s announcement that it would provide a P1,000 “education assistance” bonus to all government employees.
“We need a salary increase, not a dole-out,” said ACT Chairperson Antonio Tinio.
“Malacañang is giving us crumbs. Meanwhile, corrupt fat cats closely linked to Malacañang rake in huge incomes with this administration’s blessing. WinstonGarcia earns over P300,000 monthly, Mikey Arroyo received P600,000 monthly,” added Tinio. “The vast majority of honest workers in the government bureaucracy live on a pittance. Public school teachers earn a mere P9,939 per month—less than half of the monthly cost of living in Metro Manila.” He noted that the Arroyo government has imposed a crippling salary freeze on state workers since 2001.
Teachers further denounced the Arroyo government for its continuing refusal to provide an immediate salary increase for government employees even as LaborSecretary Patricia Sto. Tomas recently announced that private sector workers in Metro Manila would receive a P25 increase in their daily wage.
“This administration really has no compassion for teachers and government employees,” said Tinio. “It continues to refuse to grant a pay hike this year despite the skyrocketing cost of living. We’re feeling the pain of the economic crisis just as much as our counterparts in the private sector.”
Tinio noted that the P25/day wage hike granted in NCR was well below the P125 increase demanded by workers nationwide. “It’s a measly sum compared to the workers’ demands. At best it would have a marginal impact on the standard of living of wage earners. But something is better than nothing—which is what we’regetting.”
“Enough is enough! Four years without a salary increase is no longer acceptable to public school teachers,” said Tinio. “On the first day of the new school year, we will lead protest actions in schools. In the coming weeks and months, we will launch big rallies and mass leaves to press for our demands.” #
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Police's Closure of PGH Main Gate: Shade of Martial Law
PRESS STATEMENT
May 11, 2005
Reference: MR. JOSSEL I. EBESATE
National PRO and Manila Chapter President, All UP Workers Union
Mobile Phone No: 09189276381
May 11, 2005
Reference: MR. JOSSEL I. EBESATE
National PRO and Manila Chapter President, All UP Workers Union
Mobile Phone No: 09189276381
The All UP Workers Union strongly condemned the barbaric acts of the Philippine National Police against the participants to the celebration of the National Health Workers Day last Friday, May 6, 2005 at the Philippine General Hospital compound. The participants, numbering about 600 who are all employees of public hospitals in Metro Manila with some support from urban poor individuals were prevented by the police from marching to the Chino Roces Bridge (Mendiola) by closing the main gate of PGH at around 9:30 AM to 12:00 noon. The gate was opened only after the voluntary, organized dispersal by the Public Health Workers at around 11:30 in the morning - the workers being fully aware and true to their calling as public servants.
The police's action had not only stopped the group from heading to Mendiola but more importantly, it proved that we are now in a state of an undeclared Martial Law. By sacrificing the services provided by PGH to the public and unduly suppress the constitutional rights of individuals – its very own public health workers at that - the police only succeeded in putting further the sitting government in a quagmire; and alienated from it, a large segment of the Public Health Workers.
It is further lamentable that this government, instead of leading the celebration of the National Health Workers Day (as declared by President Aquino in 1987), by focusing on the flight of its own Public Health Workers, what we got was political repression and the deprivation of an affordable and quality health services to our people.
The Union therefore, together with the Alliance of Health Workers’ that organizes last Friday’s activity, is appealing to all freedom loving Filipino people to join us in our crusade. Our crusade that for this government to respect our rights especially our right to health and our freedom of expression and of assembly. The incident last Friday had proven that: it is not only the provincial journalists rights and lives that were at risks, neither were the provincial and regional leaders of progressive party list groups - but all of us.
We call on Congress to investigate the said incident in PGH. Was the action of the police headed by a certain Superintendent Paglinawan and Senior Inspector Peco, an isolated case or a general policy of the state. Are we in a state of an undeclared Martial Law?
We finally call on our fellow Public Health Workers not to lose hope, instead, we must unite so that together, we forcefully carry on in our struggle for P3,000.00 across the board salary increase, implementation of the benefits under the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers (RA 7305), the Nursing Law of 2002 (RA 9173), the increase of health budget and an affordable quality health services to our people. We must be also conscious and vigilant that while we pursue our sectoral concerns, we shall not forget that our concerns were part of the aspiration of the Filipino people for a genuine development and a real change.###
Monday, May 09, 2005
Health Workers on Health Workers’ Day: Sick with Government Neglect
It was health workers’ day last May 7 but the more than 400 health workers from different hospitals in Manila gathered a day before not to celebrate but to call the government’s attention to the worsening condition of the health sector. Their plan to bring their grievances to Malacañang Palace was blocked when the police refused to allow them to march.
BY AUBREY MAKILAN
Bulatlat
It was health workers’ day last May 7 but the more than 400 health workers from different hospitals in Manila gathered a day before not to celebrate but to call the government’s attention to the worsening condition of the health sector. Their plan to bring their grievances to Malacañang Palace was blocked when the police refused to allow them to march.
The protesters assembled inside the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) compound in Manila at 9 a.m. and were planning to march along Taft Avenue. However, a 50-man anti-riot police contingent from the Western Police District (WPD), armed with truncheons and batons, closed the hospital gates, including the pedestrian gates. They banned the entry and exit even of patients and relatives who needed to buy medicine from the hospital pharmacy. Everyone was made to use the Padre Faura gate, including a woman in labor.
The rallyists, led by the Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) and Kilosbayan para sa Kalusugan (KBK) then decided to hold their protest action inside the PGH compound.
One of the rally speakers, Remedios Maltu, president of the San Lazaro Hospital Employees Association-Alliance of Health Workers, using the sound system addressed the anti-riot police that blocked the gates of the PGH where they assembled before proceeding to Mendiola, the road leading to the presidential palace.
“Kung wala kaming mga unyonistang nakikipaglaban dito, may matitira pa bang ospital na libre ngayon?,” (Without unionists like us, do you think there would still be hospitals offering free services?), asked Maltu.
Maltu said the government should not have declared a “special” day for them if they could not even exercise their freedom of expression on that day. Through an executive order, former Corazon Aquino declared May 7 as health workers’ day.
Jenny Manuel of the Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) said the creation of Health Workers’ Day was just a consuelo de bobo (meaningless token) to them. “Kami na nga lang ang nagse-celebrate, di pa pinapayagan,” she said. “They have lined us with the other unsung heroes, and are now forgotten.”
Bulatlat called the Department of Health (DoH) but its personnel said no one is available that Friday due to the new four-day work policy of the government.
Health crisis
Both AHW and KBK hold President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo responsible for the health sector’s worsening condition. The administration’s inaction with regards the health workers’ demands – a P3,000 across-the-board salary increase; higher budget allocation for health workers’ benefits; and priority to health budget – are part of the reasons the militant health workers support the call for Macapagal-Arroyo’s ouster. Aside from health-related issues, they also criticize other state policies, particularly the anti-terrorism bill and value-added tax (VAT).
Manuel added that aside from reducing the budget for health services, the government is gearing on the restructuring of government-owned hospitals, including the Lung Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI), Philippine Heart Center, East Avenue Medical Center and Philippine Children’s Medical Center.
Meanwhile, Celestina Latonero, also called Nanay Seling by her fellow protesters and a community health volunteer in Pook Libis, Diliman, Quezon City, said in Filipino that Macapagal-Arroyo “may be the smallest president but the worst of all.”
Nanay Seling, 68, is a native of Samar (a Visayan province 800 kms south of Manila). She told Bulatlat how difficult and expensive it is to avail of medical services whether in the province or in Manila. The problem doesn’t end when the patient dies, she said. She shared how even children are forced to play sakla (a card game) to raise money for the burial expenses of their dead loved ones.
Dr. Gene Nisperos, secretary general of Health Alliance for Democracy (Head), said that the police’s behavior was not surprising and reflects only their chief’s attitude.
Sympathy
Although they blocked the protesters as instructed by their superiors, some members of the anti-riot police believe that the health workers’ calls were legitimate.
Five policemen interviewed by Bulatlat said they sympathized with them but they had to follow orders. One of them even said, “Sana ‘wag naman nila kaming i-reject sa mga ospital, pero wala talaga kaming magagawa, kaysa naman mawalan kami ng trabaho.”
According to another, they know how hard life is with a meager salary. This PO2 ranking policeman said he only receives around P11, 000 because of so many deductions.
But Maltu pointed out that performing their task should not mean the curtailment of other people’s rights. Bulatlat
© 2004 Bulatlat ■ Alipato Publications
BY AUBREY MAKILAN
Bulatlat
It was health workers’ day last May 7 but the more than 400 health workers from different hospitals in Manila gathered a day before not to celebrate but to call the government’s attention to the worsening condition of the health sector. Their plan to bring their grievances to Malacañang Palace was blocked when the police refused to allow them to march.
The protesters assembled inside the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) compound in Manila at 9 a.m. and were planning to march along Taft Avenue. However, a 50-man anti-riot police contingent from the Western Police District (WPD), armed with truncheons and batons, closed the hospital gates, including the pedestrian gates. They banned the entry and exit even of patients and relatives who needed to buy medicine from the hospital pharmacy. Everyone was made to use the Padre Faura gate, including a woman in labor.
The rallyists, led by the Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) and Kilosbayan para sa Kalusugan (KBK) then decided to hold their protest action inside the PGH compound.
One of the rally speakers, Remedios Maltu, president of the San Lazaro Hospital Employees Association-Alliance of Health Workers, using the sound system addressed the anti-riot police that blocked the gates of the PGH where they assembled before proceeding to Mendiola, the road leading to the presidential palace.
“Kung wala kaming mga unyonistang nakikipaglaban dito, may matitira pa bang ospital na libre ngayon?,” (Without unionists like us, do you think there would still be hospitals offering free services?), asked Maltu.
Maltu said the government should not have declared a “special” day for them if they could not even exercise their freedom of expression on that day. Through an executive order, former Corazon Aquino declared May 7 as health workers’ day.
Jenny Manuel of the Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) said the creation of Health Workers’ Day was just a consuelo de bobo (meaningless token) to them. “Kami na nga lang ang nagse-celebrate, di pa pinapayagan,” she said. “They have lined us with the other unsung heroes, and are now forgotten.”
Bulatlat called the Department of Health (DoH) but its personnel said no one is available that Friday due to the new four-day work policy of the government.
Health crisis
Both AHW and KBK hold President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo responsible for the health sector’s worsening condition. The administration’s inaction with regards the health workers’ demands – a P3,000 across-the-board salary increase; higher budget allocation for health workers’ benefits; and priority to health budget – are part of the reasons the militant health workers support the call for Macapagal-Arroyo’s ouster. Aside from health-related issues, they also criticize other state policies, particularly the anti-terrorism bill and value-added tax (VAT).
Manuel added that aside from reducing the budget for health services, the government is gearing on the restructuring of government-owned hospitals, including the Lung Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI), Philippine Heart Center, East Avenue Medical Center and Philippine Children’s Medical Center.
Meanwhile, Celestina Latonero, also called Nanay Seling by her fellow protesters and a community health volunteer in Pook Libis, Diliman, Quezon City, said in Filipino that Macapagal-Arroyo “may be the smallest president but the worst of all.”
Nanay Seling, 68, is a native of Samar (a Visayan province 800 kms south of Manila). She told Bulatlat how difficult and expensive it is to avail of medical services whether in the province or in Manila. The problem doesn’t end when the patient dies, she said. She shared how even children are forced to play sakla (a card game) to raise money for the burial expenses of their dead loved ones.
Dr. Gene Nisperos, secretary general of Health Alliance for Democracy (Head), said that the police’s behavior was not surprising and reflects only their chief’s attitude.
Sympathy
Although they blocked the protesters as instructed by their superiors, some members of the anti-riot police believe that the health workers’ calls were legitimate.
Five policemen interviewed by Bulatlat said they sympathized with them but they had to follow orders. One of them even said, “Sana ‘wag naman nila kaming i-reject sa mga ospital, pero wala talaga kaming magagawa, kaysa naman mawalan kami ng trabaho.”
According to another, they know how hard life is with a meager salary. This PO2 ranking policeman said he only receives around P11, 000 because of so many deductions.
But Maltu pointed out that performing their task should not mean the curtailment of other people’s rights. Bulatlat
© 2004 Bulatlat ■ Alipato Publications
Friday, April 22, 2005
Stop Paying Nuke Plant Debt, SC Justice Urges Gov't
Posted 11:46pm (Mla time) April 20, 2005
By Vincent Cabreza
Inquirer News Service
Published on page A1 of the Apr. 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines -- Supreme Court Associate Justice Reynato Puno has urged the government to consider stopping payments for loans that the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos borrowed to build the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.
Speaking at the Integrated Bar of the Philippines' 10th national convention here Tuesday night, Puno said international experts had taken the position that foreign bankers, who knowingly lent to corrupt governments, were liable for graft.
"[Several foreign creditors] knew or had no reason not to know that the loans will be used for some illegitimate purpose like supporting notoriously brazen and kleptocratic military regimes," Puno said at the convention whose theme is "Alleviating Poverty and Resolving the Fiscal Crisis."
Puno said these creditors need not be paid because they were parties to the crime. Citing Noreen Hertz, an economist at the University of Cambridge,
Puno said "there are debts which should be considered illegitimate and therefore should not be paid."
"Nearer home, the finger points to the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, which was built in 1976 and which cost us $1.9 billion in loans," he said. [Some reports placed the total cost of the plant at $2.3 billion.]
Puno noted that the Philippines was shelling out $170,000 daily (P9.35 million a day or P3.4 billion a year) for the BNPP loans and that the payments would continue until 2018.
Servicing the country's debts now accounts for the largest government expenditure, overtaking salaries of government workers in the national budget of P907.56 billion for 2005, according to Puno.
The tragedy is that Filipinos have not benefited from a single watt of electricity from the nuclear plant, which was constructed on a known earthquake fault, according to former National Treasurer Leonor Briones.
Debt repudiation
Puno said debt repudiation was nothing new. The United States repudiated Cuba's debts to Spain in 1898 at about the time it acquired the Philippines from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, according to the justice.
Today, he said South Africa, which is under black majority rule, had started questioning its obligation to repay loans acquired during the apartheid government.
He also said activists in the Iraqi government were questioning their foreign debts, which were secured by Saddam Hussein "to buy the knives that slaughtered them."
Making accountable businessmen, who were parties to a crime, also has a precedent, according to Puno.
Nuremberg Trials
He said the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II, which tried Nazi leaders for war crimes, also convicted businessmen who knowingly collaborated with the Nazis and were therefore as guilty as the people who brutalized the Jews in gas chambers.
Puno suggested that the government seek either a payment scheme similar to the Section 11 clause in the United States for bankrupt taxpayers, or a federal debt protection scheme covering American towns.
He said these schemes shield bankrupt individuals or entities from the forfeiture of their assets, protect their ability to earn, and in the case of the Philippines, its ability to continue supplying public services.
A federal law grants American municipal towns protection from creditors, enabling them to continue restructuring debts without sacrificing the quality of public service.
But Puno points out that the US law bars the towns from issuing new taxes to pay for their debts.
Puno said Hertz's proposal to put up a system patterned after the US bankruptcy laws to help developing countries could be applicable to most Asian nations burdened by debts, which were obtained by graft-ridden governments.
He said government should seek international support for an independent "ad hoc intermediary group" that would assist heavily indebted Third World countries.
Three Mile Island
It was another Puno who stopped the BNPP project. Former Justice Secretary Ricardo Puno was tasked by Marcos with assessing the condition of the plant in light of the 1979 breakdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
International experts have listed the BNPP's safety violations, including its susceptibility to an earthquake-induced damage. The Puno Commission eventually declared the plant unsafe.
But despite its mothballing, the administration of former President Corazon Aquino decided to continue paying the loans after the 1986 EDSA Revolution.
©2005 www.inq7.net all rights reserved
By Vincent Cabreza
Inquirer News Service
Published on page A1 of the Apr. 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines -- Supreme Court Associate Justice Reynato Puno has urged the government to consider stopping payments for loans that the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos borrowed to build the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.
Speaking at the Integrated Bar of the Philippines' 10th national convention here Tuesday night, Puno said international experts had taken the position that foreign bankers, who knowingly lent to corrupt governments, were liable for graft.
"[Several foreign creditors] knew or had no reason not to know that the loans will be used for some illegitimate purpose like supporting notoriously brazen and kleptocratic military regimes," Puno said at the convention whose theme is "Alleviating Poverty and Resolving the Fiscal Crisis."
Puno said these creditors need not be paid because they were parties to the crime. Citing Noreen Hertz, an economist at the University of Cambridge,
Puno said "there are debts which should be considered illegitimate and therefore should not be paid."
"Nearer home, the finger points to the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, which was built in 1976 and which cost us $1.9 billion in loans," he said. [Some reports placed the total cost of the plant at $2.3 billion.]
Puno noted that the Philippines was shelling out $170,000 daily (P9.35 million a day or P3.4 billion a year) for the BNPP loans and that the payments would continue until 2018.
Servicing the country's debts now accounts for the largest government expenditure, overtaking salaries of government workers in the national budget of P907.56 billion for 2005, according to Puno.
The tragedy is that Filipinos have not benefited from a single watt of electricity from the nuclear plant, which was constructed on a known earthquake fault, according to former National Treasurer Leonor Briones.
Debt repudiation
Puno said debt repudiation was nothing new. The United States repudiated Cuba's debts to Spain in 1898 at about the time it acquired the Philippines from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, according to the justice.
Today, he said South Africa, which is under black majority rule, had started questioning its obligation to repay loans acquired during the apartheid government.
He also said activists in the Iraqi government were questioning their foreign debts, which were secured by Saddam Hussein "to buy the knives that slaughtered them."
Making accountable businessmen, who were parties to a crime, also has a precedent, according to Puno.
Nuremberg Trials
He said the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II, which tried Nazi leaders for war crimes, also convicted businessmen who knowingly collaborated with the Nazis and were therefore as guilty as the people who brutalized the Jews in gas chambers.
Puno suggested that the government seek either a payment scheme similar to the Section 11 clause in the United States for bankrupt taxpayers, or a federal debt protection scheme covering American towns.
He said these schemes shield bankrupt individuals or entities from the forfeiture of their assets, protect their ability to earn, and in the case of the Philippines, its ability to continue supplying public services.
A federal law grants American municipal towns protection from creditors, enabling them to continue restructuring debts without sacrificing the quality of public service.
But Puno points out that the US law bars the towns from issuing new taxes to pay for their debts.
Puno said Hertz's proposal to put up a system patterned after the US bankruptcy laws to help developing countries could be applicable to most Asian nations burdened by debts, which were obtained by graft-ridden governments.
He said government should seek international support for an independent "ad hoc intermediary group" that would assist heavily indebted Third World countries.
Three Mile Island
It was another Puno who stopped the BNPP project. Former Justice Secretary Ricardo Puno was tasked by Marcos with assessing the condition of the plant in light of the 1979 breakdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
International experts have listed the BNPP's safety violations, including its susceptibility to an earthquake-induced damage. The Puno Commission eventually declared the plant unsafe.
But despite its mothballing, the administration of former President Corazon Aquino decided to continue paying the loans after the 1986 EDSA Revolution.
©2005 www.inq7.net all rights reserved
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Summary Points on Rehab Leave and Related Benefits
Notes: The following are summaries of points agreed upon by the Systemwide Ad Hoc Committee to Study Rehabilitation Leave (and Related Benefits) for Job Related Injuries during its last meeting today, April 21, 2005, 9:30 AM at the UP Manila Board. Recommendations of the Committee will be forwarded to the Office of President Emerlinda Roman for consideration by the EXECOM and of the BOR.
The present Ad Hoc Committee was already the second created, after the first committee formed on October 16, 2003 failed to came up with a substantial recommendation. It was created in response to Section 2, Article X of the Collective Negotiation Agreement (CNA) executed on April 19, 2002 between UP and the All UP Workers Union.
The present Ad Hoc Committee was already the second created, after the first committee formed on October 16, 2003 failed to came up with a substantial recommendation. It was created in response to Section 2, Article X of the Collective Negotiation Agreement (CNA) executed on April 19, 2002 between UP and the All UP Workers Union.
- The Rehabilitation Leave with pay up to six months (to include monthly salary and ACA/PERA) shall cover all employees sector and all position levels. It shall also include expenses for transportation and immediate medical treatment for work-related injuries and diseases that shall be borne-out by the University.
- Each Constituent University/Campus shall establish a commmunications hotline so that a University Official capable of deciding on necessary immediate assistance to an employees who suffered an accident or injuries in line of duty will be readily available.
- It must be noted that all throughout the UP System, only employees of the Philippine General Hospital has been enjoying the rehabilitation leave with pay (without assistance for transportation and immediate medical expenses) provided under CSC Memorandum Circular No. 41 s. of 1988 prompting the Union to include said benefit in the CNA Negotiation, to add more weight in its implementation.
- The List of Occupational and Compensable Diseasese prescribed by the Employees Compensation Commission shall be used in determining those covered for service-related illnesses. In such case, records in the Employees Clinic for Employment and Annual Physical Examinations will be immensely utilized to determine whether a disease condition is work-related or not. Note: For UP Manila/PGH Employees, it was already established that all laboratory and radiologic examinations that are available in PGH shall be available to both UP Manila/PGH employees chargeable against UP Manila/PGH and not to individual employees.
Corollary issue of increasing government contributions to the SIF from P30 to P100 per employee per month (Per ECC Board Resolution No. 02-04-235 s. 2002 and GSIS Board Resolution No. 166 s. 2004) will be closely monitored by the Union so that such adjust ment will be included in the 2006 Budget Proposal of UP (General Fund).
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