Damaged books due to termites common in public School

The Department of Education’s (DepEd) Instructional Materials Council
Secretariat (IMCS) is investigating the incident of damaged books which were
infected by termites at the DepEd Central Office.

Undersecretary for Programs and Projects Vilma Labrador reported to DepEd
Secretary Jesli Lapus that the 420 damaged books were awaiting shipment to
public school recipients.

“Since the program started, many of the department’s private sector donors had
been generous with their support, and we actually distributed nine truckloads
containing over 280,000 textbooks in our last estimate to many schools across
the Bicol region,” said Labrador.
Lapus said that “we, too, are very disappointed with this. Although those 420
books is small as compared to the 280,000 donated by publishers, these could
have been used by 420 kids who may not have it.”

The Education Chief added that “precisely because we are working on less than
ideal conditions, I have been relentlessly reminding our officials that wastage will
never be tolerated, and that we should avoid problems like this in the future.
DepEd is making sure that our limited resources are protected.”
IMCS Director Socorro Pilor further reported that “DepEd has no storage
facilities. We had to store the books in the only available place in the central
office.”

The leftover cache of some 2,600 textbooks was temporarily stored in boxes,
and was awaiting shipment to needy public schools in the country.
The books that were damaged after termites had found their way into the boxes
were broken down as follows: Grade 1 (Science and Health) – 51; Grade 2
(Science and Health) – 46; Grade 4 (Science and Health) – 314; Third Year
High School Chemistry – 9.

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