New anomalies at DepEd: Ghost students, undocumented beneficiaries

File photo by INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

The continuing series of hearings being conducted by the Senate committee on basic education headed by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian on the implementation of the Department of Education’s senior high school voucher program under the Expanded Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education Act uncovered a stinking cesspool of bold and brazen acts of graft and corruption.

Reports from the Commission on Audit (COA) and the Private Education Assistance Committee (PEAC), the committee authorized to manage and administer contributions and donations from the government for programs of assistance to private education, revealed that there currently exist some 19,000 ghost students or undocumented beneficiaries of the subsidy program. What defrauded the government of P239 million was nonchalantly dismissed by one official as a mere “clerical error.”

This willful attempt to submit fraudulent beneficiaries not only deprived the government of resources that could have otherwise been used to address the many shortcomings and deficiencies of our public school system. It also deprived 19,000 legitimate and deserving public school students of the chance to get into the private schools of their choice, where they expect to get better learning facilities and opportunities.

This could not have been made possible without the deliberate and intentional participation, connivance, and collaboration of the private schools and the government officials involved. A conspiracy this certainly is, as two or more persons agreed and decided to commit a felony. Because it takes two to tango and two hands to clap, the act of one is the act of the other. All of the members of a conspiracy are liable for the consequences of their collective act.

It is incumbent upon Gatchalian, the Department of Education (DepEd), the COA, and the PEAC to name and identify all the members of this conspiracy who are obviously “gaming” the voucher program. It is important that the private schools involved be named as they, when they accepted public school students, ceased to be “private.” They may no longer be categorized as “schools” because good and reputable schools are supposed to teach concepts, skills, and values that are right, correct, ethical, and moral. What will the students learn when the administrators of these corrupt schools are neck-deep into the money-making monkey business of fake and ghost education?

They must be made to return the millions they got by ways and means evil and diabolical. They must be put in jail, there to ruminate and learn the lesson that you cannot teach what you do not know, that you cannot, like a false prophet, preach what you do not practice.The series of anomalies and corrupt practices at the DepEd goes on and on, unabated and unchecked, like an incurable madness. When will it stop?