2010 Elections: Give Due Credit and Compensation to Teachers Serving in Elections – ACT

There were more than 229,000 BEIs assigned in 76, 340 clustered precincts in the Automated Elections System (AES) – a three-fold decrease from the number of BEIs required under manual counting. With this number of BEIs, an additional pay of P2,000 would cost the government roughly P 440 million ($9,777,777).

“It’s a substantial amount but our teachers deserve it. COMELEC has spent over Php 7 billion ($155,555,555) on the machines, but far too little for the people who made them work,” said ACT Teachers.

Hazardous Work

Credit is due to teachers, especially when their duties are physically-draining, said Eloisa Delgado, an election inspector in a precinct in Manila. In her case, she was not able to sleep for consecutive days, had to skip meals during election day and bear the ire of disgruntled voters who wait for three hours in line.

“Most of the time, voters vented their frustration on us because the voting had taken exceptionally longer this year. I was told that in other areas, people had to leave the precinct because the PCOS machine bogged down,” said Delgado.

According to Kontra Daya election monitoring team, there were at least 80 reports of PCOS machine failures nationwide, causing widespread disenfranchisement among voters. The BEIs were often left to figure out what to do in order to resume the voting process because technical assistance was often delayed.

The Department of Education (DepEd) claimed that the AES had reduced the harassment of BEIs in the 2010 elections. Since January, none of the cases of election-related violence were perpetrated against teachers, according to reports of the Philippine National Police.

However, on election day, poll-related violence still emerged as a trend in different areas across the country, especially in Luzon and Mindanao. For example, in Silang, Cavite, the BEIs were stuck in the polling precinct for several hours because a mayoral candidate had cut off the power in the precinct and fired a gun, according to Kontra Daya reports.

MAGUINDANAO — Residents push their way inside a polling precinct in Buldon town. Hundreds of voters are getting impatient — shouting, shoving, banging the doors of the precinct, demanding that they be allowed in. An army soldier tries to break a scuffle while poll watchers and the BEIs insist that voting should be one at a time. (Photo by Jes Aznar / bulatlat.com)

There were numerous cases of election-related violence against BEIs in previous elections. For instance, Filomena Tatlonghari, a teacher in Mabini, Batangas, was shot when she tried to protect the ballot box from heavily armed men. Meanwhile, Nelly Banaag, also from Batangas, died in 2007 when hired men set the polling precinct on fire.

ACT Teachers had previously called for the government to “make poll duty voluntary, not mandatory.” Teachers should be teaching their students, not work in polling precincts, said Tinio. (Bulatlat.com)