3K students still unaccounted for after Zamboanga siege

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines - - - The Department of Education (DepEd) is tracking down more than 3,000 students from public schools who remained unaccounted for and have not returned to schools 5 months after the bloody siege here last September.

The DepEd’s City Schools Division Office said the unaccounted students came from the primary schools of the three devastated Barangays of Mariki, Rio Hondo, and Sta. Barbara that have a combined student population of more than 5,000.

The division office noted high rates of unaccounted students were from Sta. Barbara Elementary School with 58.89 percent or 1,779 students; Rio Hondo Elementary School 63.39 percent or 594 students; Mariki with 58.70 percent or 678 students unaccounted.

Jane Lu, planning officer of the division office, said in their education cluster meeting the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Save the Children and other civil society organizations working closely with the internally displaced people, vowed to assist the DepEd in providing them database to track down the unaccounted students.

Lu said during the early stage of the rehabilitation effort they have already tracked down some of the students after makeshift classrooms were established in different evacuation camps and help them in their psycho-social rehabilitation.

 â€œBut some of the students declined already to return for various reasons,” according to Lu.

She said they have also adopted the program by accommodating the displaced students as transient students in schools of their host communities.

 â€œWith the database provided by the different CSO, the UNICEF, and Save the Children our target is to track down and account the students before the end of the school year,” Lu added.

 Similar records were also provided by the city government overseeing the rehabilitation and recovery efforts involving the affected and displaced families, according to Sheila Covarrubias, public information officer.

She said the education cluster will be working hand in hand with the Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) Cluster to track down students of families of home-based internally displaced persons (IDPs) not attending classes.

 The current order for students of IDP families who want to attend school is that they will be accepted in the school of their host communities as transient students.

 The DepEd Manila office who learned of the reports already expressed concern and ordered its department office here to assess the situation.