INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Comelec probes teachers’ leaves in time for May polls

Visayas Bureau

Jolene Bulambot

CEBU CITY -- The Commission on Elections in Central Visayas is looking into reports that 40 percent of teachers in the northern towns of Cebu had filed for leaves of absence stating that they were ill and could not serve in the May elections.

Comelec regional director Rene Buac told reporters that he would investigate both the teachers and the doctors who signed their medical certificates amid reports that the teachers could just be feigning illness to avoid election duties.

If the Comelec could find evidence of collusion between the teachers and doctors, it would not hesitate to file an election offense against them, Buac said.

“I was just recently informed that 40 percent from this particular district in the northern part (of Cebu) submitted medical certificates,” he said.

“This is alarming and a cause of concern because under the law, the public school teachers are mandated to serve during the election. We will be doing a preliminary investigation into this report,” the director said.

Buac said Education Undersecretary Franklin Sunga, head of the DepEd’s legal department, relayed the report to him during a conference here on March 12.

The director, however, refused to give the specific areas and number of teachers who allegedly filed a leave of absence and submitted medical certificates pending inquiry into the matter.

There are three congressional districts in northern Cebu.

Buac warned that feigning illness was an election offense and carries a prison term of one to six years.

Cebu province has over 10,000 public school teachers in the elementary and high school levels, but Buac said there was still a shortage of public school teachers who would serve as members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) in the elections.

Schools Division Superintendent Recaredo Borgonia, acting on the report, on Thursday issued a memorandum to all teachers who intend to apply for leaves of absence during the May elections that they would be examined first by the division’s medical doctors or must present laboratory examination results before their applications are approved.

Borgonia said he had also formed a team to look into the applications for leave filed by 40 percent of the teachers in a congressional district in northern Cebu.

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