400,000 teachers need training for 2010 polls

BUTUAN CITY , Philippines   – Education Secretary Jesli Lapus disclosed that the 400,000 public school teachers who would serve in polling centers all over the country during the May 2010 elections need training for the automated polls.

Lapus, keynote speaker of the recently concluded 5th Mindanao Educators Congress held here, said the teachers are still not ready for automated elections and that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should immediately train the teachers.

He said that some teachers have asked the Comelec to exclude them from serving in future elections because of threats to poll officers and accusations of poll fraud during and after election day.

Lapus said the teachers could not avoid the moral responsibility and the duty to supervise polling centers nationwide.

He said the teachers need training on how to handle the automated machines and also to manage the voters and any crisis that may arise, especially the expected protests of poll watchers of the different political parties and candidates on election day.

When asked about the time frame of the Department of Education for the training of teachers, Lapus said: “It will depend on the Comelec.”

Lapus said the Comelec would reduce the number of teachers that would serve in the automated polls.

Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said the poll body would cut by half the number of teachers that would serve as members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) in the 2010 local and national elections, from 750,000 teachers that used to serve in the elections to only about 400,000.

The reduction is a result of the clustering of polling precincts as part of the automation of the election.

Some 240,000 polling precincts were used in the May 2007 elections while only 82,000 polling centers would be used in next year’s elections due to the clustering of precincts. –BEN SERRANO, Philippine Star