Students demand relief of North Cotabato school exec

NORTH COTABATO (Dec13) --- Students of a state-run college in Arakan town on Tuesday accused the education department of ignoring their now 10-day campus picket against corrupt school officials.Teachers in the Cotabato Foundation College of Science and Technology said the Commission on Higher Education has also been patronizing blindly their school president, Samsom Molao, an ethnic Maguindanaon.Molao has been subject of protest actions by CFCST students and faculty members since 2014.In a statement Tuesday, the office of North Cotabato’s provincial governor said it has asked the CHED to immediately intervene and investigate on the clamors for Molao’s ouster.CFCST teachers on Tuesday said they could not hold regular classes since their protest action began more than a week ago.Insiders also confirmed that the situation in dormitories of protesting students worsened last week when school officials cut the supply of water to the campus to force them to disengage and return to the classrooms.Teachers and students again staged a protest rally on Tuesday morning at the CFCST campus, where speakers took turns urging CHED to immediately relieve Molao from his post and install a caretaker acceptable to all.Protesters are demanding the ouster of Molao, accused of mishandling of school funds and grants for special programs meant to improve the welfare of students and for his alleged partisan activities during elections.Molao told reporters he will never vacate his post since there is no criminal or any graft case filed against him.He said only the CHED can take him out and install a school caretaker to replace him.Local officials had also urged CHED to intervene through a resolution last week by the Arakan municipal disaster risk reduction management council.The resolution was crafted during a meeting of local officials and community elders led by Arakan Mayor Rene Rubino, the council’s administrative figurehead.The resolution called on CHED to immediately assume control of the CFCST and look into allegations of anomalies involving incumbent school officials.Tension in the CFCST campus started more than two years ago, triggered by a grenade blast in its campus and the mysterious conflagration that hit a dormitory of student-activists hostile to Molao.Harris Sinolinding, a faculty member pushing for Molao’s ouster, was nearly killed in an ambush while on his way to the school three months ago.Sinolinding has also been very vocal on the circulation of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) in the CFCST campus.Sinolinding survived the ambush unscathed, but the incident affected his teaching duties and his movements in Arakan.The attempt on Sinolinding’s life came two years after gunmen killed CFCST’s vice president, Delfin Moreno, three days after he led a rally denouncing the mismanagement of the school.The incident was followed by the ambush last year of CFCST’s administrator, Cedric Mantawil, who was also critical of the alleged mishandling of the school coffer by certain officials.Mantawil, who was seriously wounded in the attack, has since been receiving death threats via text messages from anonymous senders.