Teachers in ARMM mull poll boycott

COTABATO CITY — Thousands of teachers in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) are mulling a boycott of the May 10 elections to protest the alleged "mishandling" of their monthly contributions to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) in the past two years, sources said.

"This is now being talked about by thousands of irate teachers in the region. This will be devastating to the government. The teachers are the ones who help administer elections in far-flung, very critical areas in the region," one of the sources in the regional government said.

Last month, hundreds of teachers staged a rally in front of the offices of the ARMM’s Department of Education to protest the agency’s failure to remit their GSIS contributions deducted from their monthly salaries.

In an interview with radio station dxMS last Thursday, Acub Duluan, a teacher in Maguindanao’s Datu Odin Sinsuat town, said they have been denied their GSIS benefits, including salary and policy loans, due to the non-remittance of their contributions.

"This is very demoralizing. How can we efficiently serve our communities if we are beset with such a problem? Our regional office keeps on saying that the problem is with our head office in Manila and the Department of Budget and Management, but the GSIS tells us it’s with the DepEd-ARMM," Duluan said.

ARMM Vice Gov. Mahid Mutilan, who was the regional education secretary until he filed his candidacy for governor of Lanao del Sur last month, blamed his predecessors in the department for the non-remittance of the teachers’ GSIS contributions.