MIX OF RICH, POOR
And there is much leveling to do in Maguindanao. When wails of sirens break the silence enveloping most farming villages near the highway, vehicles immediately take the shoulder to make way for long convoys of hulking SUVs. According to residents, the convoys belong to politicians who may be on their way to Cotabato City or are bringing their children to school that are likely outside the province.

Maguindanao’s well-scrubbed and powerful send their children to private schools either in Cotabato or Davao City. Which is just as well because there is hardly any breathing room in the public schools here. In chicken-chasing Dino’s school, there are 278 students and four classrooms, which if made to DepEd standards should measure about 63 square meters each.

In schoolyear 2005-2006, Maguindanao’s education department reported an enrolment of 135,990 students in elementary school, the highest in ARMM. But, says a study funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) from August 2005 up to January 2007, the schools counted only 50,204 usable seats for the students.

There was also a critical shortage of textbooks. While elementary students were already numbering more than 100,000, the schools had a total of only 30,952 textbooks for Math, 34,039 for English, 28,810 for Filipino, and 25,697 for Science.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGO) working here have yet to come up with a solution to the textbook shortage, but one group has shanghaied parents to make chairs, benches, and tables, which are then donated to their barangay schools.

It could well be that the schools were simply overwhelmed by the sudden surge in student numbers, and thus found themselves with all sorts of shortages. Last October, the province’s planning office was jolted by the preliminary results of the government’s census: Maguindanao registered a population growth rate of 5.4 percent, more than twice the national figure of 2.3 percent. In 2000, Maguindanao already had one of the highest population growth rates in the country, at 4.16 percent.

DEFYING TRENDS
“The recent census brought us some almost incredible figure of increase,” said Unas. “We defied established demographic trends.”

	MAGUINDANAO Provincial Administrator Norie Unas [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

He added that this was probably because of an improved peace and order situation in Maguindanao, prompting, he said, people from other Mindanao provinces to settle here. Yet Maguindanao sees few people in the streets after sundown, a sign of a still-jittery population that has lived with the internecine fighting between clans, warlords, and government troops, and secessionist forces. That most of the people interviewed by PCIJ declined to be named is telling in itself.

The province’s planning office, meanwhile, said the increase in population growth rate may be the result of factors like multiple marriages, teenage marriages, return of overseas Filipino workers, late registration of newborns, and resettlement of former rebels. It also admitted to a lack of an effective, province-wide reproductive health program.

Many of the schools’ problems, however, would have probably been eased had the local government decided to pick up the slack in the national government’s spending for education.

For sure, the province’s internal revenue allotment (IRA) has not been measly. In 2005, it received over P555 million in IRA. The next year, it got P633 million.

BIG PERSONNEL BUDGET
Based on its Commission on Audit (COA) submissions in 2005 and 2006, the province spent as much as 30 percent of its budget on personnel salaries. In fact, it allocated an additional P30 million for its employees in 2006, raising the budget from P154 million in 2005 to P185 million the following year. Its maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) for those two years were more than half its total budget, from P294 million in 2005, to P389 million in 2006.

In 2006, it allocated P10 million for the secretary to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, while the provincial treasurer — who collected P1.1 million from taxpayers in 2005, and P2.7 million in 2006 — was allotted P16.8 million.

By comparison, it set aside P238,397 for the salary of its education personnel, with an MOOE of P1.6 million for that department.