Speaker JDV’s turn to shout ‘Back off’

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

Now that the Arroyo government has decided to cancel the $329-million ZTE-National Broadband Network contract, it’s time to take a closer look at the costlier $469-million CyberEd project! The aim kuno is to link DepEd headquarters to its 204 field offices and more than 37,000 public schools nationwide.

I cannot fathom how the “geniuses” at the Department of Education arrived at this discernment that the government should spend BILLIONS for our children’s education via cyberspace when they can’t think of fighting for a paltry millions to provide adequate school tables/chairs for the kids, classrooms where 40, not 70 pupils, can be comfortably seated and make classrooms conducive for learning? They can’t even stand up for the long-overdue upgrading of the teachers’ salaries!

        Worse, I don’t see how they can think of installing tv monitors for teaching students via internet when most classrooms are wired for one-bulb lighting while thousands more are without light! Hundreds are without electricity. 

It sounds like more than one Joey de V was offered $10-million and later told to “back off” and more than two Romulo Neris were offered P200 million each!

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COUNTRYSIDE SCHOOLS TO SUFFER BRUNT. So far, not a pipsqueak has been heard about any irregularity in this mega multi- billion China deal that would keep our children’s children indebted for the rest of their lives! It must be noted that the touted CyberEd project is $120 million dollars more than the proposed ZTE contract.

      But one does not have to wait for whistle-blowers to investigate and stop this insane project. What it needs is for our congressmen, governors and mayors to stand up and tell the would-be millionaires behind the CyberEd project to BACK OFF!

      Without a doubt, the nightmarish implementation of the CyberEd will forever doom the plight of the children particularly at the countryside. (The only kids who will benefit from the CyberEd are those who are schooled in Metro-Manila and possibly Metro Cebu, but that’s it). They will never be housed in a comfortable classroom, with enough tables/seats for everyone and all the books and workbooks because the monies intended for these shall be used to service debt payments to China for the next 20 years, thanks to the Cyber Ed project.

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CONGRESSMEN’S LEGACY. The PUNCH report in this issue on the worsening classroom situation in the 2nd District is indicative of what’s happening in the countryside. Note that the complaint has been limited to the state of disrepair of classrooms, no longer about the dire lack of classrooms. The school officials just gave up dreaming for more for they have come to realize that having more classrooms will never happen in their lifetime.

Our congressmen know this story too well.

In fact, they know too well that their own pork barrel funds will never ever be sufficient to serve this need in their respective districts. (Worse, a few are predisposed to allocating most of their pork barrel on road projects that pay off a handsome 20-30% pay-off in kickback).

As our people’s representatives in government, our congressmen must come together and collectively stand up in the halls of congress to manifest their objection to the CyberEd project.

Let their timely objection to the project be their own legacy to ensure that our children’s children will have a better future because they will have better facilities which otherwise cannot be possible if the country borrows P21.5 BILLION today ostensibly for a project that is not timely.

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LET’S HEAR IT FROM JDV THIS TIME.  Fighting off the CyberEd project is a timely opportunity for Speaker Joe de V to demonstrate that, indeed, he stood up to fight the ZTE-NBN project not because his son Joey had commercial interest in it  but because it was the right thing to do.

The Speaker, in his last term, should stand up for other parents’ children who may not have the chance to be educated in our public schools because of this government’s misguided policy.

Mr. Speaker, time for you to point a finger at DECS, and lead the chorus in the House to tell the idiotic geniuses – “BACK OFF”!

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HEARD NO EVIL, SAW NO EVIL? Dagupan City is about to lose P16-million, if it still hasn’t lost it, because the two-term Lim administration pulled the wool over the people’s eyes.

And what grates the people’s mind is that none of the principal characters involved in that shady land deal in   San Jacinto are even willing to offer any explanation. Not a word has been heard from my once favorite mayor Benjie Lim, his reliable lieutenants Raffy Baraan and Teofilo Guadiz III.  

So far, we’ve only heard from Councilor Joey Tamayo, who was in the city council that authorized the purchase of the 30-hectare in Barangay Awai, and he blamed Baraan for misleading the council. The others who were with him would rather stay mum about it. Why kaya??

If they wish to be invisible as the city legal officer works on the paper trail, then the least they can do is not to stand in the way when the majority and Mayor Al Fernandez decides to go after those responsible for the swindling of the city government.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/punchline/)