Press Release
April 4, 2009

Gordon inks P45.5-M accord for public school classrooms & toilets

Independent Senator Richard J. Gordon will sign tomorrow a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for the construction of additional classrooms aimed at reducing the country's backlog in public school classrooms nationwide.

Gordon has allocated P45.5 million from his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to construct at least 182 classrooms and 91 toilets in different provinces in the country under Fil-Chi's Barrio School Program.

The agreement is scheduled to be formally entered into with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the program implementor, and the Filipino-Chinese Federation at the federation's Binondo Main Office, Manila.

Gordon's initiative is in consonance with Senate Bill 2402, also known as the Health and Education Acceleration Program (HEAP), he filed in a bid to address the need to beef up the country's public educational and health care systems.

In his SB 2402, he noted that the country's educational system suffers from staggering shortages in classrooms, school facilities and educational materials, of teachers in public schools, and the dismal performance of students.

At present, the country's public school system lacks at least 12,000 classrooms, four million seats, 63 million textbooks, 39,000 teachers and 8,000 principals.

The country's public schools are also plagued by sanitation problems, such as shortage of toilet bowls. The over-all ratio of students to toilet bowls is 151:1.

In the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, the ratio in elementary schools is 171:1; while in high schools, 250:1.

Gordon's bill proposes to require telecommunication companies to remit part of their multi-billion net revenue from local text messaging to augment government resources to fund the country's educational and health care requirements.

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