By John Rey Saavedra/Philippine News Agency
CEBU CITY — An Army Reserve Command (Arescom) field unit official in Central Visayas on Wednesday said colleges and universities in the region are now beginning to adopt Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) as major service training program for their students.
Col. Jerry Borja, 7th Regional Community Defense Group (7RCDG) group commander, said his office has discovered after the annual tactical inspections in 36 colleges and universities in Region 7 that teachers and administrators themselves have seen the value of ROTC programs in their schools.
“We have a very impressive result of RAATI (regional annual administrative and tactical inspection). Our board of inspectors found out that the schools have been becoming very cooperative,” Borja told the Philippine News Agency in an interview.
RAATI is a yearly activity of the 7RCDG to “assess the ROTC unit’s proficiency in administrative and military tactics.”
7RCDG is a field unit of the Arescom that supervises four reservist mobilization units — the Community Defense Centers (CDC), in Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental, and Siquijor — and all private and public colleges and universities that have ROTC program for their students.
Borja said that even school owners have been very active in the ROTC program.
He lauded Bohol Vice Governor Dionisio Balite for his “unrelenting support to the ROTC program of the government.”
Balite owns Bohol Institute of Technology (BIT) with four campuses in Bohol, including its main campus in Tagbilaran City, and one in Siquijor province.
All BIT campuses have ROTC units, he said.
“Before RAATI, we have a corps commander’s briefing. After attending in one briefing, Balite would hurriedly proceed to another briefing in another campus. He made sure he attended them all,” he said.
In other colleges and universities, the presidents themselves offered their support to the ROTC program.
College instructors, he said, have seen the “big difference of their students before when ROTC was not yet being offered and now that ROTC becomes a major program” of their National Service Training Program (NSTP).
Under Republic Act 9163 signed into law in 2001, NSTP aims to enhance “civic consciousness and defense preparedness in the youth, by developing their ethics of service and patriotism while undergoing training” in either one of the three components: ROTC, Civic Welfare Training Service, and Literacy Training Service.
“Na-realize nila ang importance sa basic discipline nga na-instill sa ilang estudyante nga nag-ROTC (They realized the importance of basic discipline now being instilled to their students who took up ROTC),” he said. “Teachers can see the difference.”
The instructors also saw ROTC cadets in their schools who have developed other values like being creative and hardworking, he said.
Borja said the instructors have observed that ROTC cadets are now imbued with “high sense of nationalism and patriotism.”
Because of this development, he said that 7RCDG and the four CDCs under his command need to step up their efforts to make ROTC a worthwhile program for college students.
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