DepEd-Cordillera seeks help to rebuild fire-hit Benguet school
>> Saturday, June 15, 2019
BAGUIO CITY -- The Department of Education
(DepEd)-Cordillera is asking kind-hearted individuals or organizations to help
in rebuilding the Indaoac Elementary School in Tuba, Benguet or at least
provide temporary classrooms for its students, ahead of the opening of classes
in public schools on June 3.
The school burned down
to ashes on the evening of May 1.
Georaloy Palao-ay, of
the DepEd Cordillera Public Affairs division, said they have relayed the matter
to the national office in Manila.
“Ang pwedeng gawin (What
they can do), they can seek the help of the barangays (if ever temporary
classroom can be provided by barangays). If they can use the barangay halls or
portions of a house of good-hearted citizens as classrooms as temporary
solution," Palao-ay said in an interview.
“Right now, there is an
immediacy of the need to have even temporary classrooms, we are calling on the
community to help,” he said.
Palao-ay said just like
what the people of Kalinga did when the school was washed out during typhoon
‘Rosita’ October last year, "the community there on their own way, helped
each other to put up a temporary learning center”.
He said that the Benguet
division of the DepEd had asked help from the UNICEF to borrow the big tents
they lent to schools in the province after Typhoon “Ompong” in September last
year.
He said that it will
take time for new structures to be programmed under the DepEd.
School head appeals for
help
The Philippine
Information Agency, in an advisory, issued the appeal for help of Henry Tinaza,
head teacher of the school.
In the Ilocano dialect,
he said "please help us, the children have nothing to use for their
schooling when classes start on June 3”.
Tinaza said that the
school immediately needs construction materials to rebuild their school which
is being used by more than 60 students and at least four teachers who are
in-charge of the multi-grade level applied in the school.
The school's sole
unburned building, a small structure which serves as storage and canteen,
cannot accommodate the students during school days.
Initial report of the
Tuba Fire station shows that the fire at the Indaoac Elementary School in Sitio
Indaoac in Tabaan Sur started at the Principal’s room that spread to the
adjacent rooms including the Kindergarten Room, the classroom of Grades 1 and
2, Grades 3 and 4, Grades 5 and 6 and the home economics room.
The BFP estimated the
damage at P5 million.
The school had been
serving as a polling precinct in the past election, and would have served again
for the May 13 polls had it not been burned two weeks prior to the
election. -- PNA
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