Free school bus brings relief to students in South Cotabato

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Elementary and high school students in a remote barangay in South Cotabato have enjoyed free rides to and from school for years, thanks to community leaders and a private benefactor.

The barangay government of Pula Bato in Tampakan town, about 16 kilometers from South Cotabato’s provincial capital, Koronadal City, and the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated, most known as the SMI, are partners in the school transportation project.

The barangay government of Pula Bato and the SMI have a school bus that shuttles, for free, children from their villages to their schools and back to their homes during school days, something fascinating for residents of other barangays in Tampakan.

Children from the ethnic Blaan and settler communities on Tampakan are the main beneficiaries of the project.

The SMI was contracted by the national government to operate the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project in Blaan tribal enclaves in Tampakan, expected to commence in 2028.  

Mining engineers and geologists from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and from Europe had, based on their separate studies, placed at no less than US$ 200 billion their estimate of the value of copper and gold deposits in Blaan ancestral lands in Tampakan.

“I find happiness driving this bus during school days for several years now, serving learners in public elementary and high school institutions in our barangays and in nearby areas,” bus driver Arjay Leop told reporters on Saturday in Cebuano vernacular.

Leop said most of the elementary pupils and high school students he shuttles to school every day are from marginalized families.

"Their parents are earning just enough for the daily needs of their families from farming, from raising livestock, as laborers, like construction and farm workers, and as tricycle drivers,” Leop said.

Leop and barangay officials in Pula Bato had separately told reporters that each passenger of the school bus would need at least P120 daily for fare in public transportation from their homes to school and back each day.

South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. and the chief of their Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, the nurse Rolly Aquino, had separately said that what is good about the project is that the bus being used for it can also be utilized for emergency response operations.

“That private firm also has capacity-building interventions for emergency responders in the municipality,” Aquino said.