LATE last month, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. who gave his congressional clout in the lst district of Camarines Sur on a gold platter to Congressman Dato Arroyo showed elation in touting that public school teachers throughout the country are now protected against loan sharks. He was referring to the inclusion in the general provisions of the 2008 national budget the relegation to a lesser category the collection of obligations of the teachers other than mandatory deductions due the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Government Service Insurance System, the Home Development Mutual Fund, and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation. The net pay was mandated at P3,000 a month.

        It is sad to know that this so-called protection was based on a 2002 government survey that revealed the average annual indebtedness of a teacher amounted to P50,l08, more than half of his earnings for a year if he is only teacher l, and with the GSIS the biggest creditor loaning out Pl5 billion that time. The figures should be staggering today given the integrated loans adopted by the system.

        Better late the hero, huh, if oppression has not overtaken despair. For you see, majority of these teachers no longer have the convenience of keeping their ATM cards, collaterals to most private creditors who withdraw the poor teachers’ pay and return to them whatever are left, usually measly amounts of pittance.

        What government instituted as P3,000 take-home had already been arranged by said loan assigners before 2002. They even have a very viable program that gives finders’-keeper percentage crossed from joint loans of groups. And they get richer by the day. Now tell me, who’s Andaya saying as the true recipient of the proviso, the teachers and other government employees, or the government?

        Remember that in the Islands, power means guns, guns of government, that’s why Sen. Miriam Santiago challenged media to a duel for bad-mouthing her, kuno. But to GMA, she’s praise and all.

        Speaking of his former classmate at Harvard University, FPres. Bill Clinton said in the presence of GMA in New York when she was about to appear before the UNs General Assembly in September that she is the most-feared person in the Philippines. Hearing it, Sen. Mar Roxas explained the connotation of the word “fear”, of course to his advantage, off-tangent to Clinton’s meaning, reared in the bowels of Arkansas during the Confederacy. GMA it is.

        With the guardianship of 2008 l0 percent to teachers assured by Andaya in the budget, Sec. Jesli Lapus fathers the P26 billion CyberEd on Chinese loan to secure pupils in the DepEd whose underachievement is a byword. Teachers are being retrained even though the project has been indefinitely suspended for it’s in the same boat as the notorious NBN c/o FCommissioner Benjamen Abalos of the famous, now household slogan, “Secretary, may 200 ka rito.”

        Lapus, among others, tries to convince us, before getting into it, himself being a man of numbers, that we need to follow other countries using the technology by way of a satellite to monitors inside classrooms. They were ready to install it in selected centers had the originally planned build-operate-transfer-scheme-turned-loan-package misfired to kingdom come.

        I’m sure the secretary is up in arms for globalized education. It’s good. But are we doing it in the proper way? Is our mouth equal to our pocket considering the multitude of problems besetting education in the country? Next year, the wobbling field blindly reels to shortages of l,390 classrooms, 2,733 teachers, 524,237 seats, and 44.2 million textbooks. Then Lapus told us of the P6 billion to 600,000 students under the propoor program of the Arroyo administration when as a matter of fact it is the Education Service Contracting with the private education sector due to the mentioned inadequacies that have been there for years.

        Yesterday, in a local college here, I chanced to see a ranking policeman who used to be my student. He said, he met a Japanese who belonged to a group giving assistance to Camarines Sur and asked, “What’s the priority of your government?” “The policeman said, “Education!” The slit-eyed blurted, “What???!!!” in complete surprise. I told my student-friend, well, you should have told the Jap, that our priority is the economy, then education, he (foreigner) could have understood better.

        Yet our decks are not always confused. Lately, four NGOs formed the Education for All Movement. The coalition included the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, the Samahan ng ManggagawangPilipino-National Organization of Teachers and Office Workers, the Teachers’ Organization of the Philippine Public Sector, and the Trade Union VIII-Education-Federation of Free Workers. It hopes still to work with government to improve the chances of the cards.

        Take note that the ACT was the one which brought to our attention, sure in legalese, the P500 million controversial call center program of public tertiary education now halted by CHEd Chair Romulo Neri for investigation. Wow, the faceless hands are all over the education system. My gosh, it’s not only trio but quadro: preschool, elementary, secondary, and college.