Provincial board helps fix troubles in North Cotabato school

KIDAPAWAN CITY --- The North Cotabato provincial board is now helping the police investigate on the never ending violence in a state-run school in Arakan town and the unabated circulation of drugs in its campus.Socrates Pinol, chairman of the provincial board’s education committee, on Tuesday said he is now exhausting his connections to have the problems besetting the Cotabato Foundation College for Science and Technology (CFCST) addressed immediately.The board member said his move was prompted by an online news report Monday narrating the continuing strife in the CFCST and the alleged wanton peddling of drugs inside its campus.The faculty and students of CCFST on Monday urged President Rodrigo Duterte to look into the problems in their campus.The tension in the CFCST, located in Barangay Doroluman in North Cotabato’s Arakan town, worsened last week with the ambush of teacher Harris Sinolinding, popular for his unrelenting crusade against anomalies in the school.Sinolinding has also been very vocal on the circulation of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) in the CFCST campus.Sinolinding survived the ambush unscathed, but the incident affected his teaching duties and his movements in Arakan.The attempt on Sinolinding’s life came two years after gunmen killed CFCST’s vice president, Delfin Moreno, three days after he led a rally denouncing the mismanagement of the school.The incident was followed by the ambush last year of CFCST’s administrator, Cedric Mantawil, who was also critical of the alleged mishandling of the school coffer by certain officials.Mantawil, who was seriously wounded in the attack, has since been receiving death threats via text messages from anonymous senders.Pinol and Sinolinding on Tuesday met in Kidapawan City and discussed possible solutions to the nagging issues besetting the CFCST. I was about to author a board resolution seeking the intervention of Secretary Ismael Sueno on the problem, but deferred it, meantime, because I learned that the North Cotabato police is now investigating on the problems there,” Pinol said.He said he got apprehensive that a resolution sent to Sueno, who is Duterte’s local government secretary, might create the impression that the provincial police have not been doing anything to address the seeming crisis in the CFCST campus. We just have to help the provincial police office address whatever problems there are in that school,” Pinol said.Sinolinding on Monday said the attempt to kill him was certainly related to his crusade to have the operation of the CFCST professionalized for good.Barangay officials in Doroluman, where the CFCST is located, confirmed that there are insiders involved in the circulation of shabu in the campus.Several students were hurt in a bomb explosion that rocked the CFCST campus about three years ago, an incident that scared students and teachers protesting the alleged irregularities in the school.