COTABATO CITY–The more than 5,000 public school teachers hired and deployed in the past five years in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) have been active in propagating a culture of peace in schools, an education official said.
“ARMM teachers have been undergoing training in peace advocacy, most especially those assigned in remote and far-flung villages, including island communities in Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi,” lawyer Rasol Mitmug Jr., secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd) – ARMM, told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) in an interview on Friday.
Mitmug said the latest batch of these mentors were 765 licensed teachers hired by ARMM last week for deployment to Maguindanao.
He said the new teachers will fill up the vacancies left by unlicensed and unqualified teachers, including “ghost teachers” that proliferated during previous ARMM leaders’ time.
Some of the recruited teachers, he added, had volunteered to serve in the recent barangay and youth elections.
“Aside from peace advocacy, the new teachers were also trained to propagate religious and cultural solidarity with the people they serve,” Mitmug said.
Once touted as the most corrupt government agency, he said DepEd-ARMM has undergone a massive “cleansing” process that has turned it into the most competent and improved regional agency with huge savings. ( Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
