The teacher, the bus, and the elephant

A public school teacher died very recently while several other teachers were injured when the bus they were riding fell into a ravine in Bataan. The teachers were on one in a convoy of three Department of Education buses on the way home to Quezon City from a seminar held at a resort in Orani. Some 140 public elementary and high school teachers took part in the activity, with 48 of them on board the ill-fated bus.

Had it not been for a huge tree that stopped the bus from falling all the way down the 15-meter ravine, the death toll could have been higher. And all because of faulty brakes, the probable immediate cause of the tragic accident, based on the account of the bus driver. I have to say tragic because even as most accidents are, this one very clearly could have been avoided.

Of all government departments, it is the DepEd that, by constitutional assurance, must have the largest share of the national budget. To be the best-funded agency in government, one would have expected the best efficiency from DepEd. High among such expectations is a well-oiled inventory of physical assets like buses. There is no excuse for a DepEd bus to lose its brakes considering the money it has for maintenance.

But then again, and maybe because it has the lion's share of the budget, the DepEd also ranks very highly among government agencies perceived to be corrupt. It is not farfetched to imagine that the ill-fated bus lost its brakes because it was not properly maintained and that the reason it was not properly maintained is because the money for proper maintenance went somewhere else.

What makes it disconcerting is that while it is grudgingly possible to look away from the corruption, considering that it happens everywhere, there is simply no looking away when the price of tolerance and apathy comes in the form of innocent human life. And what makes it doubly painful is that the particular teacher who lost her life in an ill-maintained DepEd bus was a diligent worker much loved by everyone who knew her.

Most accidents, however, are the results of a confluence of several factors. These include those that may not have directly resulted in an accident but which, in the consideration of all things, make it entirely possible to conclude the accident could not have happened without one particular thing being factored in. Having said that, I cannot help but yank at the leg of an elephant in the room: Out-of-town government junkets.

At this point I would like to apologize to those whose lives have been affected by the tragic accident. I do not mean any disrespect or dishonor nor is it my intention to disparage the activity that sadly ended the way it did. But maybe now is the most opportune time to behold the elephant in the room for what it is, instead of pretending to ignore it forever. And there is no easy way to say it but that, "Why Orani?"

Yes, why in far-away Orani when the teachers are from Quezon City, the richest and biggest city in Metro Manila, and the capital of the country? It goes without saying that surely there must be nothing in Quezon City that cannot serve the purpose and interest of whatever seminar there is far better than what anywhere else has to offer. So why Orani? And truthfully, the same question can be asked using other places of note.

Why Boracay? Why Palawan? Why Bohol? Or Cebu and Baguio? Why are these places favorite venues of seminars for those who are not locals but from other places? Seminars do not rise or fall on where they are held but on how they are conducted. But since the premium is on location and not substance, then they become no more than expensive junkets paid for by the taxes even of those who have never been to these places.