New Basilan public school teachers receive first salary

COTABATO CITY --- More than 200 new teachers overseeing peace education activities in Basilan received Tuesday their first salary tranche and reaffirmed their pledge to work for conflict-affected children there.Hadja Nuriya Jamaldin, assistant schools division superintendent in Basilan, said on Tuesday that the teachers belong to a batch hired recently by the Department of Education-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to handle classes in remotest areas in the island province.Jamaldin said only licensed applicants willing to work in far-flung barrios were hired by ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman through the office of his regional education secretary, John Magno.Hataman and Magno enlisted more than 3,000 mentors for all of the region’s five provinces in the past 36 months to fill out teaching positions left vacant by their purge of ghost teachers listed in DepEd-ARMM payrolls that proliferated during the time of past regional governors. The new teachers were happy receiving their first salary payment ever. Some were emotional about it. We felt their happiness because we started as classroom teachers too, Jamaldin said.Jamaldin said what is admirable with the newly-hired Basilan school teachers is their dedication to work in far-flung areas beset with security constraints that could affect their performance. They worked hard silently without complaining. That is admirable, Jamaldin said.She said the Basilan-based teachers hired by DepEd-ARMM in recent months have religiously been complying with their obligations to handle classes in isolated barangays in Basilan.Basilan is one of the five component provinces of ARMM, which also covers Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, both in mainland Mindanao, and the islands of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.One of the new teachers, Ajid Dakatul, said he is thankful to DepEd-ARMM and the Office of the Regional Governor, touted as the Little Malacañang of the autonomous region, for giving them chance to land on teaching slots with government career service employment status.Akalul’s co-teacher, Marwa Abdul, said she did not resent applying for a teaching position in DepEd-Basilan. We studied to become teachers because we wanted to teach school children. Now we have the chance to build a good teaching career as public school teachers, Abdul said.ARMM’s hiring of licensed teachers in the past three years was based on stringent procedures that tested their mental abilities and readiness to work even in dangerous areas.The recruitment process was devised by Magno, an industrial psychologist, with the help of cooperating government agencies and private professionals.Magno said ARMM’s newly-hired teachers are partly focused on promoting culture of peace among school children. Peace-building is something that should start in the homes of ARMM residents and in public schools, said Magno, regional DepEd-ARMM secretary for about three years now.