Dancing Queen

Hole of Justice
by Peter G. Jimenea

The Dancing Queen

At a restaurant in City Proper area, I heard a school principal telling a companion her heartaches about the wastage of taxpayers' money by a Dancing Queen. It was only a misfortune that their satirical style of conversation did not escape from this writer on the next table.

As they continue talking about the issue, I eventually understand that their subject is Ms Erlinda Gentucaya, the Division Superintendent of City Schools, Iloilo City. The principal claims the City government has appropriated a P30M for repair of the many dilapidated school buildings in the city but a big portion was misappropriated by Ms. Gentucaya.

She also cannot understand why the dancing queen re-aligned a big slice of the appropriated budget for the purchase of reference materials than to repair the dilapidated school buildings to save the children from getting wet during heavy rains.

This writer believes that the reference materials they are talking about are books. Aaccording to them the materials will be ordered by the dancing queen from a supplier-of-choice in Manila. i refused to fully believe the story but I also agree that the principal's claim make sense.

It is a common knowledge among people doing business with the government that in the purchase of books, the approving school authority can become an overnight millionaire after the transaction is done. The principal further said that the amount slashed from the budget set for the repair of the dilapidated school buildings was P9M for books!

On why they are calling Ms. Gentucaya a dancing queen, we have yet to know. But the allegations of her spending in waste the taxpayers' money is what got me so interested about. A P9M is a nine million pesos of the people's money!

Yet, according to the school principal, they have no idea if the reference materials to be purchased could be really effective in the name of standardizing education. This creates an erroneus suspicion without affirming the public perception that the realignment of fund is done for - you know what!

Worse, the principal also said she suspects that the amount of "commission" from said purchase of reference materials will become the pocket money of the dancing queen in her going to Greece in company of the disabled children who will join a sports competition with kids from other countries.

A DepEd officials said that by Monday, July 3, Ms. Gentucaya will be back in Iloilo City. Perhaps she can tell us how our disabled kids fair compared to disabled kids from other competing countries. We also want to hear the reason in her realignment of budget for repair to the purchase of books.

True to the school principal's claim, we have a lot of dilapidated school buildings that need repair to date in order to spare our poor school children from getting wet as rainy season is already here. The purchase of books should only come as a second choice.

As to the purchase of said reference materials by the city school superintendent, we have yet to know whether it was done by bidding process or by direct acquisition. We hope she could shed light on this matter when she arrived from Greece.

There is a need for clarification of this matter as at present, top leaders in city government are now under fire due to alleged corruption. If possible, we don't want our education officials to be dragged in such mess by the "system" that seems to have overrun the government.

The story of top officials at CHED regional office in Iloilo City won't easily go away. Deliberately,they created a bad mark for their institution due to gross neglect in attending the complaint of graduating nursing students against the officials of UI- PHiNMA Nursing School.

Now the case of those poor students seems to disappear in the course of time. This is too extreme for a conclusion but we have a lot of school officials who easily yield to temptation of greed. Look at the CHED people, despite their Ministry Memorandum Ord. No. 13, S, 2006 citing the legal provisions as guidelines to be followed, they ignored it for a will to be done!

Going back to the dancing queen issue, the Iloilo City Teachers Cooperative anomaly is still stinking in the air. The secretary-treasurer of the cooperative ran away without securing a clearance from the Coop and can no longer be located. As to what happened to the members' money, that is history.

But if we look closely to the case, few officials at the Office of the Division Superintendent of City Schools has a lot of explaining to do. Like the CHED officials, we can say that everything happens for a reason, but in this case, it smacks of collusion!

Public officials should know we inclined to be corrective, not punitive. We become hostile only if they refused to heed to our messages despite the clear-understandable language and continue to commit acts contra bonos mores - contrary to sound established practice.

For honest public servants, it is better missed than damned. For the bad eggs, their office should be renamed departamento de los ladrones - department of thieves. And their tragedy is not to go but having no one to remember you!