A DAY after the Department of Education (DepEd) claimed to be “doing the best” it can to ensure teachers’ safety, a report came out that three teachers in Cebu province were exposed to a COVID-19-positive parent during the distribution of modules. DepEd must institute health and safety mechanisms, as well as safer modes of dispensation and retrieval of the self-learning modules.
These teachers’ direct exposure to an infected parent highlights the risks associated with module distribution, largely due to lack of preventive measures at schools. Not only does this prove the urgency of the need for DepEd to remedy the weaknesses in its minimum health standards, this also reinforces the demand that DepEd and the national government provide considerable resources to enable the coordinated implementation of enough safety measures. Otherwise, the state will be guilty of criminal negligence of its education frontliners.
The affected teachers requested to be quarantined in school to prevent spreading the virus to their homes should they also test positive. The school principal, however, denied their request and as such may lead to further outbreak among other reporting teachers who are busy with module segregation.
The concerns raised by teachers and by the principal were valid, but where is DepEd’s institutional accountability and support for teachers and staff? More and more teachers and staff report to school to prepare for school opening. If preventive measures will not be put in place urgently, more of DepEd’s already stretched workforce may add to the growing number of COVID-positive cases.
Needed measures are still glaringly absent in schools, in which teachers, staff, and parents, are expected to regularly meet for module preparation, collection and distribution, among others. DepEd hasn’t even provided the most basic protective gears like masks, face shields, gloves, and the like, for teachers handling the modules.
Schools have had to stretch their small MOOE allocation and gather donations from private stakeholders in order to acquire not only protective gears, alcohol, footbaths, but also printers, bond papers, ink, etc. How will we ensure that the modules had not been contaminated by either undetected infected teachers or parents?
Ultimately though, the pandemic must be resolved so that no one — not education workers, parents, learners, job orders — is subjected to possible infection.
