DepEd-ARMM to screen 6,000 teachers

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – The education department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has started screening 6,000 teachers enlisted by past administrations despite having questionable teaching licenses.

Lawyer Jamar Kulayan, regional secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd) in the autonomous region, on Friday said the effort is in line with the administrative reforms being initiated by ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman to streamline and professionalize the personnel structure of the agency.

Kulayan said he had summoned, on Hataman’s order, 6,000 teachers for a revalidation of their licenses from the Professional Regulation Commission due to perceived irregularities.

Kulayan and Hataman had earlier removed thousands of “ghost teachers” from the old payrolls of DepEd-ARMM, which resulted to the generation of P800 million-worth of savings from the agency’s 2012 and 2013 budget.

The DepEd-ARMM originally had more than 25,000 teachers in old rosters, many of them absentee workers bereft of authentic teaching licenses.

“We have directed the teachers with seemingly questionable licenses to report to the DepEd-ARMM regional office to prove that they have valid teaching licenses,” Kulayan said.

The teachers Kulayan summoned are assigned in far-flung towns in Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, which are both in mainland Mindanao, and in the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.