DepEd-ARMM denies freezing salaries of Marawi teachers

MARAWI CITY, Philippines - An education official in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) on Saturday refuted news reports purporting that the salaries of several teachers in Marawi City had been frozen due to uncertainty in the leadership of the city’s public schools division.

John Magno, assistant secretary for operation of the Department of Education (DepEd) in ARMM,  said the salary checks for the teachers in Marawi City have been sent to their field office, to be released upon compliance with requirements.

Magno said the regional government has been very prompt in releasing the salaries of teachers in the ARMM’s scattered provinces - Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

Marawi City is the capital and administrative seat of the Lanao del Sur provincial government.

Magno said the teachers that have not received salaries yet have repeatedly been ordered to submit their daily time records.

"They refuse to comply. We have asked them many times over to comply with the basic government requirement of submitting Civil Service Form 48 (daily time record) in compliance with law," Magno said.

Magno said only 19 Marawi-based teachers, not hundreds as reported, are still to submit their daily time records to the DepEd-ARMM.

"They will receive their salaries once they comply with that regulation," he said.

ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, who has ministerial control over the regional education department, said only few teachers have not been paid of their salaries yet for failure to comply with requisites for the release of their checks.

“There is no truth to reports that there are 200 or 400 teachers there that have not been paid of their salaries,”  Hataman said.

Magno said the “salary issue” involving 19 teachers in Marawi City is an administrative concern and not related to the squabble between superintendent Mona Macatanong and her supposed successor, Pharida Sansarona, for the leadership of the Marawi City Schools Division.

Sansarona is the officer-in-charge of the division, installed after Macatanong reached her mandatory retirement age, which was reduced via a court ruling.

Teachers in Marawi City at the same time also called on their allegedly uncooperative, supposedly retired Macatanong, to allow a younger successor to assume her post in keeping with government employment rules.

"Pati kami nadadamay na sa problema," a Maranaw teacher in an elementary school, who asked not to be identified, told reporters.

Macatanong had reportedly reached the mandatory retirement age, but managed to secure a court ruling saying she was younger than the original entry on her age in her bio-data she filled out when she applied as public school teacher more than three decades ago.   

Macatanong had earlier complained that DepEd-ARMM officials also intentionally withheld the maintenance and operating expenses of the schools in Marawi City to force her to retire from the service, after a court had ruled that she was younger than the age she had stated in her original civil service records.

Magno refuted Macatanong’s assertion saying the division office failed to liquidate previous operating grants, which is also a requirement for releases of funds to public schools.

"The Marawi City division was not able to submit any liquidation for more than a year now," Magno said.