CABANATUAN CITY”•A number of vocational-technical schools accredited by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority have been found to be “ghost schools” or nonexistent, an official said Sunday.
Tesda deputy director general Diosdado Padilla made the statement even as authorities have started running after the nonexistent schools that have been receiving funding from the agency.
“We have already uncovered the existence of these ghost schools and we have already filed charges against some of them,”
Padilla said during the Nueva Ecija Press Club Inc.-sponsored Media Forum at the Philippine National Police hostel here.
He said the office of deputy director general Alvin Feliciano was the one tasked to run after the ghost schools.
Lani Romero, Tesda provincial director for Nueva Ecija, said none of the nonexistent schools were operating in the province where the agency had 90 accredited vocational-technical schools.
Padilla said the ghost schools were one of the reasons Tesda undertook a national audit of all its accredited schools.
He said Tesda had also launched a local barangay skills need mapping program, the tendering system, the national inspectorate team and a national reorganization program.
Under the BSNM, a central data base is being maintained in the country’s 42,036 barangays to make sure the trainees were actual persons or individuals and not ghost trainees.
“In the past, we have discovered that there are ghost trainees to whom money is given by Tesda so with this mapping, we make sure that the recipients of scholarships are warm bodies,” Padilla said.
The tendering system, on the other hand, is a mechanism to make sure 50 percent of the graduates in Tesda-accredited jobs find gainful employment.
“If we find that their employment rate is below 50 percent, they will no longer receive funding from Tesda,” Padilla said.