Children’s education biggest casualty of restive Mayon

CAMALIG, Albay – When camp managers announced Friday that they could already go home, seven-year-old Iya Nuarin was quick to pack her things here in Caguiba National High School where she has been staying the past 11 days.

“I don't want to stay here. There's nothing to do, there is not even an Internet,” Iya told the Manila Bulletin in an interview.

But what she misses most, she said, are her classmates and teachers at the Camalig North Elementary School.

Since the 467 residents of Barangay 3 and 5 at the Camalig town proper were evacuated here after Alert Level 4 was raised over the Mayon Volcano, not a single special class was held for the scores of elementary pupils here.

Aside from the absence of rooms or even temporary learning tents, Barangay Caguiba is too far for the teachers of Iya and her classmates here.

But the area is the safest for them for the ash fall and even the threat of lahar. Evacuees here live within the nine-kilometer distance from the Mayon crater.

Cedric Daep, director of the Albay Public Safety and Emergency Management Office, acknowledged that children's education is one of the biggest casualties in evacuation.

“The affected pupils are both the children evacuees and the pupils of the schools where they would be evacuated because classrooms are usually being used as the shelter,” said Daep.

There are 76 evacuation centers in the affected three cities and six towns of Albay, almost all of them are public elementary and high schools.

In order to address the educational need of the children, a total of 358 temporary learning shelters are planned to be constructed for the affected children.

Of the number, 163 of them are either completed or still being constructed following the release of the almost P14 million from the national government. The rest are yet to be constructed.

The total cost of the 358 temporary learning shelters is 131 million.

Some of the temporary learning centers are already usable, such as one at the Palanog Elementary School also in this town being used by Grade 4 pupils.

With the order of decampment of residents outside the eight-kilometer extended danger zone, Daep said that significant number of evacuees would be reduced from the existing more or less 85,0000 evacuees.

And this means resumption of regular classes right in their own schools, according to Daep.

Late Friday afternoon, Iya could not help but smile when the truck that would transport them back to their home arrived.