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MANILA, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 12, 2007) – Sulu provincial Governor Sakur Tan lauded the Philippine Congress for doubling the allocation for the government’s Basic Education Madrasah Program.

The increase in funding will enable the government to train additional teachers in English, Arabic and Islam, develop new instructional materials, and rigorously monitor the performance of a new standard, Cebu Representative Eduardo Gullas said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.

He said the Basic Education Madrasah Program seeks to lift to the national average the learning level of Filipino-Muslim school children. Madrasah is Arabic term for school.

“We welcome this development and surely this will be a big help in the Madrasah program,” Tan told the Mindanao Examiner.

Sulu in the southern Philippines is one of five provinces under the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The Department of Education (DepEd) is specifically targeting the training of 2,668 teachers as well as the production and distribution of 800,400 new textbooks to reinforce the Basic Education Madrasah Program, according to Gullas.

The textbooks set for distribution next year is 50 percent more than the manuals being distributed this year, Gullas said.

Government-subsidized Islamic schools offer the standard public school curriculum as well as Arabic literacy and Islamic religious subjects.

Without counting the schools in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, DepEd currently has 459 public schools nationwide implementing the Basic Education Madrasah Program.

Gullas said the fresh funding for Islamic schools would give more meaning to the Constitutional mandate for the State "to establish, maintain and support a complete, adequate and integrated system of education relevant to the needs of the people and society."

A report by the DepEd earlier warned that decades of neglect have made tens of thousands of Muslim out-of-school youth (OSY) in Metro Manila and other urban districts susceptible to recruitment by both Islamic extremists and criminal elements.

Many of the Muslim OSY are products of extreme poverty and the lingering armed conflict in Mindanao, the report said.

To address the problem, DepEd has been building up the Basic Education Madrasah Program as well as the Alternative Learning Program for Muslim OSY.

MANILA, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / 18 Sept) – With prices of crude oil soaring, Filipino lawmakers now have reasons to postpone next month’s village polls in what they say would be a big savings for the government.

Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas said the fresh surge in crude oil prices to new highs above $80 per barrel drove the House of Representatives to finally pass a bill seeking to reset the Oct. 29 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections to May 2009.

“This is not just about the modest government savings. This is about stopping some P8 billion in election-related spending by candidates from being needlessly pumped into the system at a time when oil prices are hovering at or near record highs,” Gullas said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.

Gullas is the author of the bill that seeks to postpone the polls despite a strong protest from many groups to cancel the elections.

He insisted that the P8-billion spending would come barely six months after bets in the May 14 mid-term elections swamped the system with tens of billions of pesos.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said there is a potential new inflationary pressure on consumer prices that may be brought about the recent surge in oil prices.

"High oil prices are becoming a concern. Definitely, it will have an impact on inflation, not immediately this September because the oil companies here still have inventory," BSP Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said.

Guinigundo said the adverse impact of the recent surge in oil prices would likely be felt starting October, right around the time election-related spending in connection with the Barangay and SK polls is expected to heighten.

Crude oil futures touched record highs above $80 per barrel last week.

"If we unnecessarily stir inflation in a big way, we're afraid this might force the BSP to eventually raise interest rates, or keep them at current levels, at a time when other countries are already lowering rates," Gullas said.

The high lending rates in turn could dampen the country's strong economic expansion, and set back the debt-laden government's financial recovery, Gullas warned.

"We know how indebted the National Treasury is, despite the favorably strong peso that has allowed the government to lessen its dollar-denominated liabilities. The government is thus extremely vulnerable to rising interest rates, just like the private sector," Gullas said.

Excessive money supply tends to put upward pressure on consumer prices as people are induced to spend more when they have more cash in their pockets.

Raising interest rates is one of the options available to the BSP to curb excessive money supply and fight any added inflationary risks.

The polls have been previously reset many times and maybe postponed in 2009 because of the Presidential and national polls in 2010. (Mindanao Examiner)

MANILA, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / 29 Jul) – Pharmaceutical firms have allegedly put up as much as P1-billion lobby fund to derail the passage of a bill seeking to reduce medicine prices.

But Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas has warned multinational pharmaceutical firms against carrying out their plan, saying, the government is firm in supporting the “Cheap Medicine Bill.”

"Our people desperately need access to affordable medicine. The new Congress has no other recourse but to quickly pass the bill. It is bad enough that the previous Congress failed to pass the bill," Gullas said.

Gullas earlier introduced House Bill 307, his version of the Cheap Medicine Bill. The measure is comparable to the bill previously introduced by Iloilo Rep. Ferjenel Biron.

Last week, Biron accused multinational drug firms of putting up the money to allegedly “kill” the Cheap Medicine Bill.

Gullas' bill seeks to provide Filipinos increased access to inexpensive drugs by reinforcing the parallel importation scheme of the state-owned Philippine International Trading Corp. (PTIC), and by allowing any entity to import patented drugs sold cheaper in other countries.

Gullas said the country’s health protection remains grossly inadequate, with only one of every three citizens covered by medical insurance. He said the government's insufficient financial resources have hampered universal health insurance coverage.

As a result, Filipinos have to take out of their own pockets more than 40 percent of all health-related spending, including the purchase of high-priced medicines.

"Congress should promptly relax existing patent rules by declaring that parallel importation will not violate trademarks, as long as the drugs brought in are determined to be genuine counterparts produced in other countries," Gullas said.

"Allowing unrestrained competition is one sure way for Congress to help drive down drug prices, and make them more affordable to most Filipinos."

Based on the finding of previous congressional inquiries, dozens of branded drugs that are now being sold here at prohibitive prices, may in fact be imported and sold here for much less.

For example, a branded amlodipine which costs P44.75 in the Philippines sells only P6 in India. And branded drugs such as Mefenamic acid that costs P20.98 in the country sells for about P2.80 in India and P1.46 in Pakistan. And same with branded loperamide hydrochloric acid that usually costs P10.70 only sells P1.94 in Pakistan.

The PITC imports about 90 cheap medicines that are being sold to the public through Botika ng Bayan outlets. The 1,345 outlets nationwide will be increased to 2,000 by year's end.

This year, the PITC plans to import from Pakistan and India an additional P500-million worth of medicines, mainly for diabetes, asthma, hypertension, and tuberculosis.

MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / 08 Jul) - House Deputy Majority Leader Eduardo Gullas urged the Department of Education (Deped) to use no less than the national hero, Jose Rizal, to motivate students to master the English language.

The solon from Cebu province is the author of a bill seeking to reinstate English as the medium of instruction in elementary and high school in the Philippines.

"While Rizal did not speak English, to which he then had absolutely no exposure, he did master at least four other foreign languages," he said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner on Sunday.

"In this sense, Rizal can definitely served as a model that can inspire school children to learn English, the global lingua franca, or other foreign languages that will be useful to them once they join the labor force," Gullas said.

Rizal, who studied in Europe, was fluent in Spanish, French, German and Latin, even as one of the popular proverbs attributed to him is: "Ang hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika ay mas masahol pa sa mabahong isda." (People who do not love their own language are worst than a rotten fish).

"In an increasingly borderless 'global village' characterized by the freer world trade in human resources and services, English mastery or a working knowledge of the language is certainly a huge competitive advantage," Gullas said.

"This applies to all Filipinos -- to nurses, engineers, sailors, hotel staff, construction workers, caregivers and domestic helpers overseas, as well as to the Filipino personnel here of multinational firms and business processing outsourcing (BPO) providers," Gullas said.

Gullas, meanwhile, lauded the Supreme Court decision throwing out a lawsuit that had sought to stop the Deped from enforcing a new language policy reviving English in schools.

Gullas was referring to the petition filed by a group of Filipino writers, academicians and linguists, asking the tribunal to restrain the implementation of Executive Order 210 and Deped Order 36, both of which seek to bolster English in schools.

A large labor group earlier bared that BPO providers here have stepped up hiring of Filipinos who can speak at least one foreign language besides English.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) pushed for the "foreign language skills "retooling" of secondary and vocational school graduates, college undergraduates and jobless professionals, to build up their chances of securing gainful employment.

"Workers who are able to speak a second foreign language can surely look forward to even more lucrative jobs, here or overseas, in global corporations, non-government organizations and multilateral institutions," TUCP spokesperson Alex Aguilar said.

"So this is definitely not just about well-paying jobs in call centers here that are now offering a substantial premium for extra foreign language proficiency," he said.