Senators on Wednesday urged the Department of Education (DepEd) and Department of Health (DOH) to also prioritize teachers in the national COVID-19 vaccination program as the government prepares for the resumption of face-to-face classes.
This, as they scored the "unacceptable" rate at which a small number of teachers have been inoculated.
Senator Nancy Binay made the appeal after learning from the DepEd, during the hybrid hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture on the planned resumption of face-to-face classes, that the vaccination rate for the entire teaching population under the agency is only at 30-plus percent.
“Maybe we can do a special vaccination program for our teachers. If we were able to do it for our tourism industry workers, why can’t we do it for our teachers?" Binay pointed out during the hearing.
Senator Pia Cayetano echoed Binay's appeal saying that the DepEd should have made adequate preparations in the one and a half years the schools had been closed due to the pandemic.
“Even though we know the President has not yet allowed (face-to-face classes), we expect that all the planning was happening," Cayetano said.
" Sad to say, I feel there is no urgency in ensuring that there was a plan in place to get all the teachers vaccinated and clearly, it wasn’t a top priority,” she lamented.
Later on during the hearing, DepEd Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan corrected the figures, saying that at least 57 percent of the teacher population have been inoculated.
But the senators said 57 percent is still not acceptable.
"Our teachers are our frontliners. I am shocked. Fifty-seven percent for me is still unacceptable," Binay said.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the Senate education panel, also prodded education officials to give priority to the vaccination of teachers which is essential to a safe reopening of classes.
"The push here is to go back to face-to-face classes. This is also one way of giving confidence to parents," Gatchalian said.
"That’s one of the ways of building confidence, which we are quite not satisfied with the way it is going,” he stressed.