Tulfo to Ched: Ban Bestlink from off-campus activities
Sen. Raffy Tulfo — File photo from Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Raffy Tulfo wants the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) to perpetually disqualify Bestlink College of the Philippines from conducting off-campus activities citing the institution’s mishandling of events that placed students in danger.
READ: 13 students, 1 driver killed in Tanay bus accident
Speaking at a Senate hearing on Monday, Tulfo claimed these off-campus activities are being conducted at the expense of students while the school is making tons of money.
“I want Bestlink’s perpetual disqualification from conducting off-campus activities like excursion. It’s been two incidents already – the first one, many died, and how many fell unconscious. What’s going to happen next? Are we going to allow them to let it happen again just like that?” said Tulfo in Filipino.
The senator was referring to Bestlink’s “unauthorized” off-campus activity in Bataan in January where students experienced “severe logistical problems and safety concerns, many of whom were stranded for hours with no transportation to go back to Manila.”
READ: Ched probes botched ‘unauthorized’ Bestlink activity in Bataan
Apart from this, in 2017, 13 students and a bus driver were killed after a tourist bus carrying around 50 people bound for a research field trip in a resort in Tanay, Rizal, bumped into an electrical post.
The fatalities, four of them female, were college students from Bestlink College of the Philippines.
Tulfo believes that these incidents should have alarmed Ched, requesting that Bestlink be “banned” from conducting off-campus activities, particularly excursions.
“Ban them. They have no right. There are already deaths, we should’ve done this before. What’s stopping us if we’re cancelling a bus franchise if a passenger dies?,” he said.
Tulfo was talking to Ched executive director Cinderella Filipina Benitez-Jaro, who explained that they have already issued a resolution to Bestlink.
“This is the Commission’s resolution. Aside from downgrading their authority, we also placed a penalty of suspension to conduct local off-campus activities both curricular and non-curricular effective immediately upon receipt of the notice,” said Benitez-Jaro.
This prompted the senator to ask how long the suspension would last, to which Benitez-Jaro said there was no definite timeline included in the document. /das
