ACT members barred from serving in 2019 midterm elections?

MANILA, Philippines — Some local education officials are allegedly prohibiting members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) from serving as election inspectors in the upcoming midterm polls.

In a statement issue yesterday, the teachers’ group asked the Department of Education (DepEd) to clarify reports that its members are being declared as ineligible to serve in the elections.

“In Central Luzon and Eastern Samar, DepEd officials have purportedly been announcing in meetings with school heads and in teachers’ seminars that ACT members are prohibited from being part of the board of election inspectors (BEI) for the 2019 elections,” the group said.

“In Laguna, a document that made rounds among teachers detailed the qualifications of BEI members, which explicitly noted that members of the ‘Allegiance of Concerned Teachers’ are not qualified,” it added.

The DepEd has yet to respond to the ACT statement.

Earlier, a petition was filed before the Commission on Elections seeking the disqualification of ACT members from serving in the elections, supposedly on the basis of the group’s ties with the ACT Teachers party-list group.

But according to ACT, their organization is different from the party-list group, noting that they were founded over a decade before the adoption of the party-list system in 1995.

“ACT is an alliance of organizations, associations and unions of teachers, education workers, educators and advocates from the public and private sector who unite to forward the rights and welfare of education workers, as well as the people’s right to education,” said ACT secretary-general Raymond Basilio.

They said their members would not be involved in campaigning as prohibited by civil service regulations.

The poll body has yet to act on the petition to disqualify ACT members.

According to the group, no law or policy allows for the wholesale disqualification of BEI members, especially not on the grounds of their affiliation with any organization.

“Furthermore, barring teachers from serving as poll workers is a violation of Republic Act 10756 or the Election Service Reform Act (ESRA) which states that public school teachers shall be prioritized in election service,” it said.

“This is a vicious attack against teachers’ economic rights. For underpaid teachers, the P6,000 honorarium they receive as workers during elections is a significant addition to their scant income. The accordance of a just compensation to the difficult and perilous job they take on every election is a product of their determined and consistent effort to push for the enactment of the ESRA, and to prohibit them now from participating as BEIs is to deny them of their hard-earned victory,” the group added.