By NITZ ARANCONCorrespondent
MILITANT organizations are planning to take to the streets on Monday and greet the opening of classes here with protests in an effort to pressure the government to do something about the nearly one million students reportedly displaced as a result of the implementation of the K to 12 program.
The demonstrations here, to be carried out simultaneously with mass actions elsewhere in the country, would be jointly staged by the College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), League of Filipino Students (LFS), Kabataan partylist, Bayan Muna, and other militant groups.
Rochamae Bihag, vice president for Mindanao of the CEGP, said activists want President Aquino to solve the problems resulting from the implemtation of the K to 12 program.
Nearly a million students nationwide failed to get enrolled because of the K to 12 program, and the Department of Education’s failure to provide enough facilities, Bihag said.
She said the public schools lacked facilities, classrooms, textbooks, chairs.
Bihag said Deped records show that 2.4 million high school students are supposed to be enrolled in the K to 12 program this year but only 1.5 million were actually enrolled.
Bihag said what happened was that the government could not accommodate all the high school graduates, and expected them to enroll in private schools.
The problem, she said, is that the tuition in private schools are not affordable to many families.
“Mao na nga almost one million high school students pa ang wala o dili makatungha sa opening sa klasi,” Bihag said.
She said the protesting groups would demand the scrapping of the K to 12 program if the government cannot solve the problem.
Bihag said another round of street protests would be carried out across Mindanao against the K to 12 on June 20.
By that time, she said the activists would address their appeal to President-elect Rodrigo Duterte in the hope that his administration would scrap the K to 12 program implementation.
“Mahitabo gayud ang simultaneous protest actions sa administration ni President Duterte kon dili siya maminaw sa among panawagansa pag-scrap sa K to 12 program,” Bihag said.