Teachers assail people's distrust in census

MANILA, Philippines - Public school teachers serving in the ongoing 2010 national census assailed the distrust and hostility shown to them by some people as they called on the government to support the 75,000 teachers serving as census enumerators.

Emmalyn Policarpio, Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) spokesperson, urged the government to encourage the public to cooperate with the 2010 Census of Housing and Population (CHP) and inform the people of the importance of the census.

Policarpio cited efforts in year 2000 when the government waged a media campaign to disseminate information on the census, with no less than then President Joseph Estrada being featured in television and radio advertisements urging the people to support the CHP and the benefits of giving accurate information.

She said a media campaign would ensure the people’s cooperation with the teacher-enumerators.

Policarpio lamented that the government seems to have scrimped on such a campaign to promote support for the census.

“These politicians and the government itself spend multi-billion pesos in election-related advertisement, yet their coffers are drying up for information drives that are beneficial to the people. They conveniently sacrifice the teachers in this 2010 CHP,” Policarpio said.

Aside from uncooperative residents, Policarpio said that even subdivision and barangay officials have been slow to give permits to the enumerators to go around communities in their respective districts.

Policarpio said many teachers who served as Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) in the recently concluded elections have not taken time to rest just to serve as census enumerators.

The CHP is a decennial project of the National Statistics Office (NSO) where public school teachers are tapped to be census enumerators.

This year, about 75,000 public school teachers will serve in the CHP.

Education Secretary Mona Valisno had appealed to the people to “cooperate in giving our teachers accurate data on their households.”