VICE PRESIDENT and Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio on Sunday hit the planned week-long jeepney strike, saying it is “communist-inspired” and a barrier to government efforts to address the country’s education problems.
“The transport strike is a painful interference in our efforts to provide solutions to the problems besetting our education system and will only exacerbate the learning hardships of our students,” Ms. Carpio said in a statement.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) urged the Department of Education (DepEd) to allow its local offices to suspend classes in areas where public transportation will be hampered by the strike.
“ACT should know that a weeklong transport strike, at this critical point in our efforts to remedy learning losses, is a learning disruption,” Ms. Carpio said.
The Philippine leader called ACT a “lover” of the “ideologies espoused by the New People’s Army, the Communist Party of the Philippines, and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.”
The group, in response, said Ms. Carpio resorted to red-tagging ACT instead of addressing the concerns of teachers and students.
That is “shameful,” it said in a statement.
House Deputy Minority Leader France L. Castro, who represents the ACT Teachers Party-list in Congress, said the vice president’s statement demonstrates how unsympathetic she is to the plight of public transport drivers and teachers. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza and Beatriz Marie D. Cruz