ILOILO CITY — The Department of Education in Western Visayas (DepEd-6) is preparing for the random drug testing of its personnel, teachers and high school students in the region.
In an interview Tuesday, Leah Belleza, education program supervisor and concurrent information officer of DepEd-6, said that they had scheduled an orientation on January 31 for personnel from the regional office and schools division offices about the random drug test.
Belleza said there were more or less 120 personnel, composed of permanent employees, plantilla, contract of service and job orders, who were set to undergo the test from the regional office.
They are still waiting for the 18 schools division offices in the region to submit their list of personnel directly to the DepEd central office’s drug workplace secretariat on or before January 26.
“After we submit the list of employees in the region office and schools division offices, the central office will collaborate with DOH (Department of Health) for the conduct of the random drug testing but we do not know when they are coming,” she said.
Aside from this, they have also required each division school office to create a task force to orient their personnel on the guidelines of the drug test.
The task force shall be composed of divisions’ school superintendent and assistant superintendent as chairman and co-chairman of the task force, respectively, and medical officers, legal officer, human resource chief, division information officer as members.
Meanwhile, Belleza said that they were still waiting for the guidelines from their central office for the conduct of random drug testing to all the teachers and secondary students.
“We are targeting to conduct it before the closing of school year this March but we are yet to receive guidelines for the students,” she said.
Based on the data of DepEd-6, there are currently 38, 835 public school teachers in 3,411 elementary schools in the region.
There are also 19,414 junior high school teachers and 6,097 senior high schools teachers in 704 secondary schools in the region.
For students, there are currently 530, 641 junior high school students and 128, 458 senior high school students enrolled in public schools.
The drug testing program is mandated under DepEd Order no.37 to promote a “drug-free workplace, promote the maintenance of a safe and healthy work environment in DepEd workplaces and schools, free from the use of dangerous drugs, to safeguard the health, safety and welfare of its employees, and to reduce health and safety risks to our learners and to the public.”
“We assure all our personnel both in the RO (regional) and SDOs (schools division offices) that the result will be treated with utmost confidentiality,” Belleza said. (PNA)
