JEDDAH, 4 December 2003 — A Saudi education official has said new members of the International Philippine School in Jeddah’s (IPSJ) board of trustees would be appointed if the number of qualified candidates does not improve.
Mansour Ghazali, the ministry’s outgoing director of foreign schools in the Makkah Region, said only five out of 19 IPSJ parents who have filed their candidacy for the hotly contested board have qualified so far.
A letter to the IPSJ principal from Abdullah bin Mohammad Al-Howaimel, director general of foreign education, identified the five qualifiers as Mokhalid Diagao, Ricardo Briones, Leonilo Lucena, Yusoph Taha, and Mardy Dimalotang.
Howaimel’s letter said the ministry was giving the other applicants until Dec. 9 to complete the requirements.
Most of them either did not have the standard NOC (no objection certificate) authenticated by the Chamber of Commerce or no original certificate from the Philippine Consulate. At least two were found to have unpaid accounts with or delayed payments to the school.
Ghazali told the applicants to obtain any or all of the missing documents, including a certificate of “no derogatory records” from the Philippine Consulate.
“If the trend will not change, we already have six, one more candidate makes the seven BOT members. They will be automatically appointed without the need of conducting an election,” he said in a telephone interview.
Reacting to complaints that the documents being required were difficult to obtain, Ghazali said if the others were able to secure such documents, there’s no reason why the rest could not do the same.
He also warned those who passed the screening but later found to have submitted fake or “doctored” documents/certificates would be disqualified and charged in court.
Ghazali said the MOE has set stringent requirements for candidates for the good of school and its students. For instance, he said, parents who are delinquent in paying the fees of their children should not be allowed to sit in the board, otherwise “they will keep doing the same thing all over again.”
He stressed that the guidelines are crystal clear and anyone running for the board must be of good standing, no pending old or current account.
“They should set a good example to help the school and to gain respect among members of the community,” he said.
No specific election date has been set but Ghazali said it will be known after the new deadline and once the documents of the remaining candidates are scrutinized.
Told that some of the would-be candidates are due for their Christmas holidays in Manila, Ghazali said: “If they choose to serve the school, they have to delay their vacation.”
Founded in the early ‘80s, the IPSJ is said to be the oldest overseas school of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. It is also the biggest, with an average population of 1,200 students for the past few years.
Under a new Saudi law on foreign school, the Philippine Embassy relinquished control of the IPSJ to an elected board of trustees in year 2000.
The IPSJ’s recent history had been tainted with violent takeovers.
