On Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, Metro Manila and other major provinces around the country have shifted in yet another imposition of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ). Such ECQ currently in place is more restrictive than the previous ones to assumingly curtail the recent surge of the Delta variant of Covid-19, a feared variant of concern that not even most vaccines can ensure effectivity against.
Nonetheless, it is apparent that the ECQ narrative, time and again, has been soiled and condemned. As for the broadest union of students in the country, such imposition instead has long exposed the true and narrowest enemy in our midst.
At first glance, education stakeholders would suppose that it is the implementation of another ECQ that is our prime adversary to a gradual and safe resumption of physical classes. However, ECQ, in itself, is nothing like that. Under mass-oriented cognizance, the antagonist of the narrative is Duterte and his regime’s outright refusal to address the demands of the education sector that is a viral spell that needs to be rebuked.
Before the comeback of ECQ, students, teachers and parents faced great peril in continuing education amid the health crisis. Mental health is the primary concern of the sector, especially in times of great uncertainty brought by the incapacity of Duterte to provide pro-Filipino pandemic responses.
Under the stringent but second-rate response, the masses have borne the brunt of unemployment, which, in turn, forces students to drop out from attending formal education because of the measly support provided by the state.
Another ECQ in place, without scaling up vaccine rollouts, free and mass testing, immediate contact tracing and genomic surveillance of Covid variants and the absence of P10,000 economic relief and subsidy for the masses, further construed as the government’s admission of its inutility and incompetence to curb the ills faced by Filipino students and educators more than a year after the country’s first surge.
This is in line with the reported underspending of Commission on Higher Education, in which the Union has been condemning because of the obvious insolence to utilize the meager funds for education stakeholders. What the government must prioritize in imposing another lockdown in most areas like Metro Manila and nearby areas are economic and livelihood support, aggressive but not militaristic health response and culpability for rights violations.
The struggles of the students under the inutility of Duterte seem to have no apparent end in sight. That is why in this third implementation of yet another ECQ, he shall not receive a failing grade, but rather a forced expulsion. It is now more than ever that we put an end to Duterte’s regime as he remains to be the true prime hindrance to a safe resumption of physical classes.