THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers hit Social Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo’s “prejudiced and uncalled for” statement that teachers may favor certain people if they will be involved in the distribution of the agency’s educational cash aid.

“Isa itong napaka-iresponsableng pahayag mula sa iresponsableng opisyal na utak ng palpak na sistema ng pamamahagi ng ayuda para sa mga estudyante. Sir, you cannot cover up your own failures by nitpicking on others. Huwag kami,” Vladimer Quetua, the group’s chairperson, said.

He called on Tulfo to apologize to teachers.

“Sec. Tulfo has inconvenienced our teachers enough when he made a very late announcement a few days before school opening that educational assistance will be distributed. It caused the deluge in schools of parents asking for certificate of enrolment at a time when our teachers are struggling to set up their classrooms, source out chairs and accomplish last-minute preparations for the class opening. He only aggravated our teachers’ displeasure with his administration with such an insulting statement,” Quetua added.

“For your information, sir, our teachers do not want the job. For decades, many government agencies have been utilizing the services of our teachers for various duties that take away time from teaching such as monitoring the 4Ps recipients, monitoring the immunization of students, administering the demorwing program, and performing census and election duties. Some of these duties we are compensated, while in some, we are not, but at least the other agencies and the past DSWD secretaries are grateful enough for our help,” he said.

He cited Section 14 of the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers that mandates that agencies utilizing the services of teachers shall pay the required additional compensation of daily rate plus 25 percent premium but this has not been always implemented.

“Nagseserbisyo ang ating mga guro nang lampas-lampas pa sa kanilang tungkulin. They don’t deserve to be insulted like this and be put in such bad light. Mr. Tulfo should apologize,” Quetua said.