Less than half of public schools have CCTVs, guards – DepEd

Department of Education Central Office in Pasig City —Inquirer photo/Niño Jesus Orbeta

MANILA, Philippines — Only three in 10 public schools nationwide have security guards while only four in 10 have security cameras, according to data presented on Thursday during a Senate hearing on a bill that seeks more resources for campus security, a concern made urgent by the deadly Tacloban City shooting incident last month.

The grimness of the June 22 attack, involving two teenage suspects and which left three high school students dead and 20 others injured, loomed large over the discussion on the proposed School Safety Act.

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The bill originally focused on addressing the problem of campus bullying, but its scope has now expanded to cover equipment upgrades, emergency response protocols, as well as enhanced mental health initiatives and closer community involvement, according to the author, Sen. Bam Aquino.

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At Thursday’s hearing, Education Undersecretary Malcolm Garma provided the Senate committee on basic education an overview of the current security measures in public schools across the country.

Only three out of 10 schools have security guards, or just 31.7 percent or 15,328 schools out of the national total, Garma said.

Maintenance, operations budget

Funds for the security personnel’s salaries are drawn not only from maintenance and operations budget of the Department of Education (Deped), but also from the local government units and the parents-teachers associations, he said.

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Only four out of 10 schools have installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems, Garma added.

Eighty percent of the CCTV-equipped schools have less than 10 cameras to cover the entire campus, 14.2 percent have 11 to 19 cameras, and only 6.14 percent have more than 20 cameras, he explained.

At Tacloban City’s San Jose National High School where the shooting took place, only eight CCTVs were working that day and there were “blind spots” in other areas of the school, Garma reported.

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Two security guards were manning the gate at the time of the incident and there were no other guards posted around the campus, he added.

Garma surmised that the two gun-wielding students managed to enter the campus unchecked because they were already familiar to the guards.

Asked by Aquino during the Senate hearing whether schoolbags were checked at the gates that day, Garma said it was done only randomly to prevent long queues from forming.

The senator said the Tacloban incident should not be considered an isolated incident but a critical call to action.

“In this measure, we are strengthening on- and off-campus security. We are expanding the use of CCTV and other appropriate security measures. We are reinforcing emergency response protocols, we are strengthening mental health and psychosocial support for our students and teachers,” Aquino said, explaining his bill.

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“Schools must be safe, students must be safe, and the School Safety Act must be made a priority by our government,” he stressed. —KEITH CLORES, AND TINA G. SANTOS