Your desperate effort to justify your scandalous QUEEN Project does not at all detract from reality that the motive of Mayor Jesse Robredo is to use Naga City teachers in a political scheme that may expose them to electioneering charges. Of course, some teachers may partly be blamed for acting like surrogates of Robredo when they know that they are employees of the national government and while the local government may coordinate with them on purely developmental undertakings it has no supervisory power over them.
If, as you admitted, only 67% of Naga City elementary school pupils graduate from the elementary level the reason is not because they are not able to pay minimal school fees. The main reason is their parents are simply too poor; only a few people are getting rich in Naga City, obviously including Mayor Robredo who is even facing charges in the Ombudsman for not including in his Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) some of his assets acquired while mayor.
Paying miscellaneous school fees is never a guarantee that all Naga City pupils would finish their studies because their greater problem is they do not have enough food to eat at home. Poor parents for whom Mayor Robredo could not find employment or income opportunities would prefer that their children quit school and already help in their struggle for survival.
You see them begging in downtown Naga City; you do not perhaps realize that Naga City has more beggars than all Bicol cities combined, and please find time to count them. Others become snatchers, thieves, and eventually robbers, hold-uppers, and ultimately killers. That is what the Naga City government must ponder upon instead of crowing about awards which people know anyway to be hollow and meaningless, some given by gullible groups that did not bother to assess the real situation here.
For instance, did not Robredo receive awards because of the Metro Naga Development Council (MNDC) which had not actually become operational yet member municipalities contributed to its fund each year without receiving anything in return?
It has become very clear that the QUEEN Project is a political ploy because its implementation is being timed with the election just a few weeks away. All government activities that may influence the outcome of the election are being suspended or banned but here in the QUEEN Project you are pressuring teachers to make parents sign documents that would make them indebted to candidate Robredo.
Anyone may crave for power, but let us not endanger the teachers.
And yes, if Robredo has earned enough, why doesn’t he pay from his own pocket?
