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Save the robbers
It’s now more prevalent the comment that robbery in Naga City and
nearby municipalities has become more rampant due to the coming
Christmas Season and more particularly to the implementation of
the EVAT. It’s no longer much of a surprise when you hear theft in
this place or that. We have been immensely tolerant to believers
than non-believers.
So, we easily agree when someone says, “Save the robbers by
jailing them. Of course to rehabilitate them and keep them from
being more harmful.” It may take a little more work from Mayor
Jesse Robredo in terms of the city, but you can’t take it away
from him, the guy just loves to do even an extra mile for Nagueños.
You see only last week the Concepcion Grande Elementary School
with about 36 teachers, you can imagine them with 40 pupils each,
in the city, had some 15 of their classrooms been ransacked by
desperate robbers. The incident went to blotters again, naturally
with the superlatives making more vivid the details of destroyed
locks, broken windows, forced cabinets, strewn papers and lost
items like television set, CD player, radio, calculator and measly
sums, contribution perhaps of children who usually pay jeepney
drivers one to three pesos a ride against the minimum six.
Teachers’ money? You should be joking.
These thieves are customers of the school. In the last 10 years,
they made about four or five visits. And they invaded one or two
or three classrooms each appearance. But with over 15 lately, that
should be something. They must have played on overtime with nobody
noticing including the barangay tanods at the barangay hall right
at the compound of the school. No one was at the building or the
hall. Who can you blame?
If the customer-robbers are caught, the children would be better
off. Not unlike today, they are being oppressively cheated by the
sorry predicament.
You see the school teaches them, “Manirahan sa isang payapa at
tahimik na pamayanan. Maipagtanggol at matulungan ang pamahalaan.”
With these painted on a large wall and posted in classrooms and
explained by teachers, surely, the pupils understand its meaning.
Yet what’s happening in the school clouds their simple minds and
we know for a fact that the actual weighs over and above that
which is not seen. The youngsters then could but cower in fear.
The robbers may not know that they are destroying their own
children.
We’re sure instances of this kind are happening in many more
schools in the province. And the DepEd at the national level puts
even very little effort to grave problems of the department. Just
imagine a three-day conference and workshops of 2,000
educationists to retrain the 458,282 public school teachers in
English, math, and science, with none on problems of security.
If this were the avian flu and it has mutated to human to human
transmission, most of us would be dead simply by now.
The local teachers are dangling on their own in mid-air with
robbers. Sorely, they can cry for help with the LGUs. Well, the
helpless children should not be left alone, that’s for sure.
