Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte has denounced the week-long transport strike by several groups against the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP) as a “communist-inspired” and “harmful” disruption to the learning recovery efforts of the Department of Education (DepEd).
In a statement released on Monday, Duterte said that the transport strike, which was supported by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (PISTON), was a “painful interference” in DepEd’s efforts to address the learning gaps and other woes in the education system amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We oppose it because it is problematic, it will hurt our learners, and the inconvenience that it may cause comes with an enormous price deleterious to learning recovery efforts — and this is a price that learners will have to pay,” Duterte said.
She added that if ACT and PISTON could not understand or refused to understand her position, it was because of their “unbelievable propensity to push a hardline agenda that punishes the general public.”
She also accused PISTON of being an organization with leaders and some members “poisoned by the ideologies of the bankrupt Communist Party of the Philippines, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, and the New People’s Army.”
She said that ACT was also “happily cavorting” with PISTON and other militant organizations, and that it was a group that was “diametrically nowhere near in service of interest of learners and education sector.”
“This is not red-tagging. This is a statement of fact,” she said.
Duterte vowed that despite the transport strike, there would be no stoppage in learning for students.
“Magkaroon man ng tigil pasada, walang tigil sa pag-aaral ang mga kabataan,” she said.
She also expressed her sympathy for students and teachers who would be affected by the strike.
“Kawawa ang mga estudyante at mga guro. The first failure of this transport strike is the failure to consider our learners and our teachers,” she said.