Delayed Salaries, Unpaid Wages Hound Southern RP Teachers

SULU, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 04, 2007) — Disgruntled government teachers continued their protest Tuesday in the southern Philippine province of Sulu, demanding salaries that remain unpaid for months now. The strike began Monday after a few hundred teachers walked out of their school rooms to demand their wages and an investigation into alleged anomalies involving hundreds of millions of pesos in state pension contributions. The teachers complained that they have not been paid their wages the past months by the Department of Education in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and that their contributions to the state pension agency which are worth over 600 million pesos since 2003 were also missing. They earlier threatened to stage a mass protest should ARMM Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan fail to act on their problems. More than 5000 teachers are currently teaching in Sulu province. Sulu Gov. Sakur Tan on Tuesday appealed to the teachers to end their strike and return to work. Tan has ordered the creation of team, composed of teachers and education officials that will look into the problems of the teachers. "We will look into these problems and try to resolve it peacefully in coordination with the Department of Education in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao," he told reporters. Tan said the teachers converged at the office of the Department of Education in Sulu province. But it was not immediately known how long the protest would be. Lawyer Oscar <b>…</b>