DepEd Bought 166 new vehicles

Many teachers were saddened by the recent news that DepEd bought new vehicles each amounting to approximately Php 1.4M each.

According to Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on Monday that the government planned to buy this a very long time already.

“Lahat po ng napo-procure sa taong itong eh, matagal na po iyong nasa drawing board. Itong pagbili po ng transportasyon ng DepEd, 2016 pa po iyan na-identify na pangangailangan ng DepEd at ngayon lang po iyan nabili nga ano pero iyan po ay included sa 2019 budget”.

“Bago pa po dumating ang pandemya eh naaprubahan na po iyang budget na iyan.”

According to Roque, the vehicles will then be used by DepEd engineers in making their inspections into the classrooms and even will be used in the module distributions. The regional offices can also use the said vehicles to roam around the community in this time of the pandemic, he added. Despite Malacañang defending DepEd on this matter, many teachers opt to give their disappointment to the issue. Even the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) burst out their sentiments to this matter.

“Alam naman natin na mahalaga ang trabaho ng mga engineers, pero sa panahong ito, marapat lamang na ituon ang pagtustos sa mga prayoridad para sa pag-aaral ng mga bata,” ayon kay Benjo Basas, Pambansang Tagapangulo ng Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC).

This will surely create different interpretations and opinions from teachers all over the country since the struggle during this pandemic is really heavy most especially that we have to make both ends meet on the distribution of the modules and on finding the resource materials in coping up with the reproduction of the modules. As a teacher myself, I think that the timing in buying those vehicles is not good enough especially that we are still in the middle of fighting this pandemic. It is understandable that the vehicles are meant to help the DepEd engineers and were already planned ahead of time but what matters is the current situation we are all in. DepEd is just being insensitive to the sentiments of the teachers who in the first place were the first ones to experience the struggle. If this action (the buying of the vehicles) was done before the outbreak of Covid, or maybe after Covid will finally vanish, then I think there will be no problems at all, but then again, this time of pandemic is an exception.

When the government said that the vehicles will be used by engineers, okay then fine but when it was also mentioned that the vehicles will also be used by regional offices in roaming around and help in distributing the modules, I don’t think it will be true at all since it has been how many months since this pandemic popped up but I haven’t seen any officials from the region, not one who is brave enough to roam around their schools trying to foresee how their teachers are doing. Most of them were afraid to also travel themselves so as to contract the deadly virus. How can they also help in the distribution when in fact the teachers were the ones who did all the work? Whatever the purpose of their actions is, for sure it will not benefit all the teachers and the schools.

It is understood that even with teachers being disappointed and airing out their ideas and comments, still it won’t change the fact that those vehicles were already bought. There is no point in pinpointing the villain on this issue, somehow we already know that DepEd will never change their view on this. It is enough that they know that teachers do have some points to tell during this time of pandemic that was not even heard most of the time. – Clea | Helpline PH