FIRST SAY:
“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
—o0o—
IT could be that Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian has enough credibility and trust among his colleagues in the Senate that he was able to push in the chamber one of his pet bills which was approved on third and final reading in the Senate last week.
We refer to the proposed measure to discontinue the mandatory use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3.
The measure, sponsored by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, was formalized by Senate President Francis Escudero, a day after the opening session of the 19th Congress.
"Mother tongue as the medium of instruction is not a one-size-fits-all solution for every classroom. It is effective only in monolingual environments where learners are uniformly native speakers of the same mother tongue," Gatchalian said.
It is easy to decipher but only Sherwin was able to do the analysis and prod himself to action—that the use of mother tongue according to the schools’ geographical location is problematic.
I need to cite here my grandson Enzo Leandre C. Ilagan, a boy who was born in Manila but his parents relocated a couple of years ago in Tarlac City, where Kapampangan might be considered as the “mother tongue.” The boy had to learn the dialect (some people will be offended and will try to convince us that is should be termed “language”) and at the same time learn the basics of life, the fundamentals of personal hygiene, arithmetic, family life, and religion as taught by a Catholic school. And this at a time of the Covid-19 pandemic and the recovery period from the public health emergency.
According to Gatchalian, the measure was only effective in schools where everyone was using the same language, more so in far-flung areas. This is true.
The new bill allows the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education, as outlined in Republic
Act 10533 (the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013), to be applied in monolingual classes provided the orthography is developed and documented by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF), and that literature in the language and culture is available.
The bill also mandated the Department of Education to review the implementation of the program three years after the law is passed.
"The review shall further include recommendations on whether to continue or discontinue the optional use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction in monolingual classes based on the review conducted by the DepEd," the bill stated.
President Bongbong Marcos should prioritze the signing into law of this Gatchalian bill.
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Finance Secretary Ralph Recto found himself in hot water for issuing a memorandum to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) instructing the government corporation to transfer its P89.9 million “extra funds” to the Bureau of Treasury, for use by the government for purposes other than health.
Secretary Recto now says it was a mandate from Congress that pushed the Department of Finance to order state health insurer PhilHealth to remit its unused budget of P89.9 billion back to the treasury. This was the explanation of Recto, defending his department’s order to PhilHealth.
“We are following Congress’ order. The Congress said in the 2024 budget that the DOF should be the one to issue a circular so that it could use funds that are possibly hibernating, sleeping or unused by other GOCCs. (Government-owned and controlled corporations),” Recto said in Filipino at a post-State of the Nation Address discussion.
According to Recto, at least two government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) had a combined P200 billion in unused funds, with approximately P89.9 billion belonging to PhilHealth and the remaining amount held by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC).
It might evoke some laughter, but the finance secretary correctly termed the money as “sleeping funds,” meaning they are just in the balance sheets of these government firms but are not being used productively.
Recto said, could also benefit the country’s growth rate by less than 0.8%, which could translate to 6,000 jobs.
He added that the Department of Finance (DOF) also checked the measure’s legality with the Governance Commission for GOCCs, the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel and the Commission on Audit. All three agencies said that the memorandum was legal.
“More than P500 billion is sleeping in PhilHealth, even if we remove the P89.9 billion, there is still P500 billion—good for three years or more,” Recto said.
While there may still be more sleeping funds in other GOCCs, he said a bulk of it was in the PDIC and PhilHealth. Dormant funds from other GOCCs would likely not be that big, Recto said.
It will be unlikely that any more sleeping funds will be added to the government’s unprogrammed funds, the finance chief stressed.
Many people have expressed concern about these developments, citing the need for PhilHealth to pay all the hospitals and member-patients for their reimbursements of hospitalization expenses.
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